Holodomor Facts and History

Child Victim of Famine The following are a chronology of events that led to the Holodomor 1917 The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin take power in Russia. 1922 The Soviet Union is formed with Ukraine becoming one of the republics. 1924 After Lenins death, Joseph Stalin, one of the worst dictators in human history ascends to power. 1928 Stalin introduces a program of agricultural collectivization that forces peasants/farmers to give up their private land and livestock, and join state owned, factory-like collective farms. Stalin decides that collective farms would not only feed the industrial workers in the cities but would also provide a substantial amount of grain to be sold abroad, with the money used to finance his industrialization plans. 1929 A policy of enforcement is applied, using regular troops and secret police. Many Ukrainian peasants/farmers, known for their independence, still refuse to join the collective farms. Stalin decides to liquidate them as a class and accuses Ukrainians of bourgeois nationalism.

1930 Hundreds of thousands are expropriated, dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped to Siberia where they are left, often without food or shelter. In the end, 1,000,000 Ukrainian peasants are seized and more than 850,000 deported to the frozen tundras of Siberia, where many perished. 1932-1933 The Soviet government increases Ukraine's production quotas by 44%, ensuring that they could not be met. Starvation becomes widespread. Secret decrees are implemented that allow arrest or execution of any starving peasant found taking as little as a few stalks of wheat or a potato from the fields he worked. By decree, discriminatory voucher systems are implemented, and military blockades are erected around Ukrainian villages preventing the transport of food into the villages and the hungry from leaving in search of food. Brigades of young activists from other Soviet regions are brought in to confiscate hidden grain, and eventually all foodstuffs from the peasants homes. Stalin states of Ukraine that the national question is in essence a rural question and he and his henchmen determine to teach a lesson through famine and ultimately, to deal a crushing blow to the backbone of Ukraine, its rural population. 1933 Ukrainians are dying at the rate of 25,000 a day, more than half were children. In the end, up to 10 million starve to death. Stalin denies to the world that there is any famine in Ukraine, and prevents international aid from entering the country.

Corpses of Famine Victims on the streets. (Kharkiv, Ukraine) Uncovering the Truth: Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition. (as reported by the New York Times correspondent and Pulitzer-prize winner Walter Duranty) Denial of the famine by Soviet authorities was echoed at the time of the famine by some prominent Western journalists, like Walter Duranty. It was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the

existence of a famine and thus to refuse any outside assistance. Anyone claiming that there was in fact a famine was accused of spreading anti-Soviet propaganda. Inside the Soviet Union, a person could be arrested for even using the word famine or hunger or starvation in a sentence. Outside the Soviet Union, governments of the West adopted a passive attitude toward the famine, although most of them had become aware of the true suffering in Ukraine through confidential diplomatic channels.

In November 1933, the United States, under its new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, even chose to formally recognized Stalins Communist government and also negotiated a sweeping new trade agreement. The following year, the pattern of denial in the West culminated with the admission of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations. Stalins Five Year Plan for the modernization of the Soviet Union depended largely on the purchase of massive amounts of manufactured goods and technology from Western nations. Those nations were unwilling to disrupt lucrative trade agreements with the Soviet Union in order to pursue the matter of the famine.

It was kept out of official history until 1991, when the country of 47 million finally won its independence. Today it is recognized as genocide by less than two dozen countries out of 196. The famine is now the focus of books, exhibitions and documentaries marking the 75th anniversary of the tragedy. Ukraines government is asking the United Nations to recognize the disaster as an act of genocide, worsening already frosty relations with Russia, which says the famine resulted from drought. Russian nationalists vandalized an exhibit at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow in November. While the Russian government didnt condone the attack, it called Ukraines depiction of the famine a one-sided falsification of history.

In recent years Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko had ordered the release of old KGB records on the Famine.

With this information it has become very apparent that this Famine was a deliberate act of Genocide, a method to ethnically cleanse Ukrainians from the territories of Ukraine and parts of Russia. At first only several thousand documents were released. Recently another batch of 25,000 documents is being declassified.

As more documents are released this event in Ukrainian history has taken on a very ominous tone. On November 28th 2006, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament of Ukraine) had passed a decree defining the Holodomor as a deliberate Act of Genocide. Eyewitness accounts: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

"Please return the grain that you have confiscated from me. If you dont return it Ill die. Im 78 years old and Im incapable of searching for food by myself." (From a petition to the authorities by I.A. Rylov) "I saw the ravages of the famine of 1932-1933 in the Ukraine: hordes of families in rags begging at the railway stations, the women lifting up to the compartment window their starving brats, which, with drumstick limbs, big cadaverous heads and puffed bellies, looked like embryos out of alcohol bottles ..." (as remembered by Arthur Kaestler, a famous British novelist, journalist, and critic. Koestler spent about three months in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv during the Famine. He wrote about his experiences in "The God That Failed", a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-Communists, who were writers and journalists.) Our father used to read the Bible to us, but whenever he came to the passage mentioning bloodless war he could not explain to us what that term meant. When in 1933 he was dying from hunger he called us to his deathbed and said This, children, is what is called bloodless war... (as remembered by Hanna Doroshenko) "What I saw that morning ... was inexpressibly horrible. On a battlefield men die quickly, they fight back ... Here I saw people dying in solitude by slow degrees, dying hideously, without the excuse of sacrifice for a cause. They had been trapped and left to starve, each in his own home, by a political decision made in a far-off capital around conference and banquet tables. There was not even the consolation of inevitability to relieve the horror." (as remembered by Victor Kravchenko, a Soviet defector who wrote up his experiences of life in the Soviet Union and as a Soviet official, especially in his 1946 book "I Chose Freedom". "I Chose Freedom" containing extensive revelations on collectivization, Soviet prison camps and the use of slave labor came at a time of growing tension between the Warsaw Pact nations and the West. His death from bullet wounds in his apartment remains unclarified, though it was officially ruled a suicide. His son Andrew continues to believe he was the victim of a KGB execution.) "From 1931 to 1934 we had great harvests. The weather conditions were great. However, all the grain was taken from us. People searched the fields for mice burrows hoping to find measly amounts of grain stored by mice..." (as remembered by Mykola Karlosh) "I still get nauseous when I remember the burial hole that all the dead livestock was thrown into. I still remember people screaming by that hole. Driven to madness by hunger people were ripping the meat of the dead animals. The stronger ones were getting bigger pieces. People ate dogs, cats, just about anything to survive." (as remembered by Vasil Boroznyak) "People were dying all over our village. The dogs ate the ones that were not buried. If people could catch the dogs they were eaten. In the neighboring village people ate bodies that they dug up."

(as remembered by Motrya Mostova) "Im asking for your permission to advance me any amount of grain. Im completely sick. I dont have any food. Ive started to swell up and I can hardly move my feet. Please dont refuse me or it will be too late." (From a petition to the authorities by P. Lube) "In the spring when acacia trees started blooming everyone began eating their flowers. I remember that our neighbor who didnt have her own acacia tree climbed on ours and I went to tell my mother that she was eating our flowers. My mother only smiled sadly." (as remembered by Vasil Demchenko) "Of our neighbors I remember all the Solveiki family died, all of the Kapshuks, all the Rahachenkos too and the Yeremo family - three of them, still alive, were thrown into the mass grave" (as remembered by Ekaterina Marchenko) "Where did all bread disappear, I do not really know, maybe they have taken it all abroad. The authorities have confiscated it, removed from the villages, loaded grain into the railway coaches and took it away someplace. They have searched the houses, taken away everything to the smallest thing. All the vegetable gardens, all the cellars were raked out and everything was taken away. Wealthy peasants were exiled into Siberia even before Holodomor during the collectivization. Communists came, collected everything. Children were crying beaten for that with the boots. It is terrifying to recall what happened. It was so dreadful that every day became engraved in my memory. People were lying everywhere as dead flies. The stench was awful. Many of our neighbors and acquaintances from our street died. I have no idea how I managed to survive and stay alive. In 1933 we tried to survive the best we could. We collected grass, goose-foot, burdocks, rotten potatoes and made pancakes, soups from putrid beans or nettles. Collected gley from the trees and ate it, ate sparrows, pigeons, cats, dead and live dogs. When there was still cattle, it was eaten first, then - the domestic animals. Some were eating their own children, I would have never been able to eat my child. One of our neighbours came home when her husband, suffering from severe starvation ate their own baby-daughter. This woman went crazy. People were drinking a lot of water to fill stomachs, that is why the bellies and legs were swollen, the skin was swelling from the water as well. At that time the punishment for a stolen handful of grain was 5 years of prison. One was not allowed to go into the fields, the sparrows were pecking grain, though people were not allowed." (From the memories of Olexandra Rafalska, Zhytomir) "A boy, 9 years old, said: "Mother said, 'Save yourself, run to town.' I turned back twice; I could not bear to leave my mother, but she begged and cried, and I finally went for good."

(Recollected by an observer simply known as Dr. M.M.) "At that time I lived in the village of Yaressky of the Poltava region. More than a half of the village population perished as a result of the famine. It was terrifying to walk through the village: swollen people moaning and dying. The bodies of the dead were buried together, because there was no one to dig the graves. There were no dogs and no cats. People died at work; it was of no concern whether your body was swollen, whether you could work, whether you have eaten, whether you could you had to go and work. Otherwise you are the enemy of the people. Many people never lived to see the crops of 1933 and those crops were considerable. A more severe famine, other sufferings were awaiting ahead. Rye was starting to become ripe. Those who were still able made their way to the fields. This road, however, was covered with dead bodies, some could not reach the fields, some ate grain and died right away. The patrol was hunting them down, collecting everything, trampled down the collected spikelets, beat the people, came into their homes, seized everything. What they could not take they burned." (From the memories of Galina Gubenko, Poltava region) "The famine began. People were eating cats, dogs in the Ros river all the frogs were caught out. Children were gathering insects in the fields and died swollen. Stronger peasants were forced to collect the dead to the cemeteries; they were stocked on the carts like firewood, than dropped off into one big pit. The dead were all around: on the roads, near the river, by the fences. I used to have 5 brothers. Altogether 792 souls have died in our village during the famine, in the war years 135 souls" (As remembered by Antonina Meleshchenko, village of Kosivka, region of Kyiv) "I remember Holodomor very well, but have no wish to recall it. There were so many people dying then. They were lying out in the streets, in the fields, floating in the flux. My uncle lived in Derevka he died of hunger and my aunt went crazy she ate her own child. At the time one couldnt hear the dogs barking they were all eaten up. (From the memories of Galina Smyrna, village Uspenka of Dniepropetrovsk region)