Holodomor in modern politics
The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR and adjacent Cossack territories between 1932 and 1933 that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians due to starvation. The event is considered a genocide by Ukraine, a crime against humanity by the European Parliament, and merely part of the wider Soviet famine and famine relief effort by the Russian Federation.
Background
The Holodomor famine has experienced controversy in its classification as genocidal due in part to the objection of prominent Holocaust experts who took issue with the politicization of the word "genocide," a term originated by Raphael Lemkin. Lemkin was a featured speaker at the manifestation of Ukrainian-Americans in September 1953 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine.At the international conference of the Ukrainian Holodomor, which was held in October 2003 at the Institute of Social and Religious History of Vicenza, 28 conference participants that included well-respected historians like James Mace, Hubert Laszkiewicz, Andrea Graziosi, Yuriy Shapoval, Gerhard Simon, Orest Subtelny, and Mauro Martini – endorsed a resolution addressed to the Italian government and the European Parliament with a request to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.
Governments and parliaments of several of other countries have also officially recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide.
List
The following international organizations recognize the Holodomor as genocide:The following international organizations recognize the Holodomor as a tragedy or crime against humanity:
The following countries recognize the Holodomor as genocide:
The following countries recognize the Holodomor as a criminal act:
Local recognition
Ukraine
On May 15, 2003, the Ukrainian parliament of Ukraine also passed a resolution declaring the famine of 1932 and 1933 to be an act of genocide, deliberately organized by the Soviet government against the Ukrainian nation.In 2006, the Security Service of Ukraine declassified more than 5,000 pages of Holodomor archives which suggest that the Soviet regime gave Ukraine less humanitarian aid than other famine-struck regions.
On November 28, 2006, the parliament passed a resolution recognizing the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the "Ukrainian people" and criminalizing both Holodomor denial and Holocaust denial. Supporting the bill were BYuT, NSNU, Socialists, 4 independent deputies, and the Party of Regions. Opposing the bill were KPU. 200 deputies did not cast a vote. In all, 233 deputies supported the bill, which was more than the minimum of 226 votes required to pass it into law.
In 2007, President Viktor Yushchenko declared he wanted "a new law criminalising Holodomor denial", including the designation of the Holodomor as genocide or not, but such a law has never been adopted. Communist Party head Petro Symonenko accused Yushchenko of "using the famine to stir up hatred" and stated he "does not believe there was any deliberate starvation at all". Few in Ukraine share Symonenko's interpretation of history and the number of Ukrainians who deny the famine or view it as caused by natural reasons is steadily falling.
On 12 January 2010, the court of appeals in Kiev opened hearings into the "fact of genocide-famine Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932–33". In May 2009, the Security Service of Ukraine started a criminal case "in relation to the genocide in Ukraine in 1932–33". In a ruling of January 13, 2010, Kyiv's Court of Appeal recognized the leaders of the totalitarian Bolshevik regime as those guilty of 'genocide against the Ukrainian national group in 1932-33 through the artificial creation of living conditions intended for its partial physical destruction.'" The court dropped criminal proceedings against the leaders: Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Stanislav Kosior, Pavel Postyshev, Vlas Chubar and others, who all had died years before. This decision became effective on 21 January 2010.
Russian Federation
The Russian Federation officially says that the Holodomor is not an ethnic genocide.The lower house of parliament passed a resolution in 2008 stating that the Holodomor should not be considered genocide:
There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines. Its victims were millions of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country.
The Russian Federation condemned the Soviet regime's "disregard for the lives of people in the attainment of economic and political goals", along with "any attempts to revive totalitarian regimes that disregard the rights and lives of citizens in former Soviet states" yet stated that "there is no historic evidence that the famine was organized on ethnic grounds."
Russian politician Mikhail Kamynin has claimed that Russia is against the politicisation of the Holodomor, and this question is for historians, not politicians. Simultaneously the vice-speaker of the Russian State Duma, Lyubov Sliska, when asked in Kiev when Russia would apologize for its part in repressions and famines in Ukraine, replied, "why always insist that Russia apologize for everything? The people whose policies brought suffering not only to Ukraine, but to Russia, Belarus, peoples of the Caucasus, and Crimean Tatars, remain only in history textbooks, secret documents and minutes of meetings."
Ukrainian mass media censured Evgeny Guzeev, the Consul-General of the Russian Federation in Lviv, who stated that "the leaders of the period were sensible people, and it is impossible to imagine that this was planned."
Kyiv Post believes that Russia contests the recognition of the famine as a genocide is because "as the Soviet Union's legal successor, Russia is also concerned about the possibility of legal action or having to pay reparations."
On November 17, 2007 members from Aleksandr Dugin's Russian nationalist group the Eurasian Youth Union broke into the Ukrainian cultural center in Moscow and smashed an exhibition on the famine.
According to a Moscow Times article: "The Kremlin argues that genocide is the killing of a population based on their ethnicity, whereas Stalin's regime annihilated all kinds of people indiscriminately, regardless of their ethnicity. But if the Kremlin really believed in this argument, it would officially acknowledge that Stalin's actions constituted mass genocide against all the people of the Soviet Union."
In November 2010 a leaked confidential U.S. diplomatic cable revealed that Russia had allegedly pressured its neighbors not to support the designation of Holodomor as a genocide at the United Nations.
International recognition
United Nations
The final report of the "International Commission of Inquiry Into the 1932–33 Famine in Ukraine", delivered to the UN Under-Secretary for Human Rights in Geneva on May 9, 1990, concluded that the famine in Ukraine was, in fact, genocide. At same time the commission majority deems it plausible that the constituent elements of genocide were in existence at the time of the famine. Commission is unable to affirm the existence of a preconceived plan to organize a famine in Ukraine, in order to ensure the success of Moscow policies.On 10 November 2003, 23 countries affirmed the Joint declaration at the United Nations in connection with 70th anniversary of the Great Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933, which had the following preamble: evaluating the Holodomor as a great tragedy.
In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women and children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime. The Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine, took from 7 million to 10 million innocent lives and became a national tragedy for the Ukrainian people. In this regard, we note activities in observance of the seventieth anniversary of this Famine, in particular organized by the Government of Ukraine.
Honouring the seventieth anniversary of the Ukrainian tragedy, we also commemorate the memory of millions of Russians, Kazakhs and representatives of other nationalities who died of starvation in the Volga River region, Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan and in other parts of the former Soviet Union, as a result of civil war and forced collectivisation, leaving deep scars in the consciousness of future generations.
Valery Kuchinsky, the chief Ukrainian representative, stated that the declaration was a compromise between the position of Ukraine that the Holodomor was a genocide and the positions of Great Britain, United States and Russia that it was not.
United States
At the conference on "Recognition and Denial of Genocide and Mass Killing in the 20th Century," held at City University of New York on 13 November 1987, it was stated that Soviet Ukraine suffered a man-made famine in 1932–1933, during which millions died. The United States Government Commission concluded this was part of the central governments's attack on Ukrainian nationality and culture. The United States Government received numerous contemporary intelligence reports on the famine from its European embassies, but chose not to acknowledge the famine publicly. Similarly, leading members of the American press corps in the Soviet Union willfully covered up the famine in their dispatches. In both cases, political considerations relating to the establishment of diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R. seem to have been critical factors in this cover-up.According to the US Government Commission on the Ukrainian Famine, the seizure of the 1932 crop by the Soviet authorities was the main reason for the famine. The US commission stated that "while famine took place during the 1932–1933 agricultural year in the Volga Basin and the North Caucasus Territory as a whole, the invasiveness of Stalin's interventions of both the Fall of 1932 and January 1933 in Ukraine are paralleled only in the ethnically Ukrainian Kuban region of the North Caucasus".
Europe
On 3 July 2008 the Parliamentary Assembly of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe passed the resolution condemning the Ukrainian famine acknowledging the direct responsibility of the Soviet action. The resolution called upon all parliaments to take measures on recognition of the fact of Holodomor in Ukraine but fell short of recognizing it as an act of genocide as requested by the document prepared by the Ukrainian delegation.On 23 October 2008, the European Parliament passed a resolution that called Holodomor "an appalling crime against the Ukrainian people, and against humanity" that was "cynically and cruelly planned by Stalin's regime in order to force through the Soviet Union's policy of collectivization of agriculture". The resolution, however, stopped short of calling the famine an act of genocide.