Douglas Tottle (born 1944) [1] is a Canadian trade union activist and journalist, most notable for being the author of the book Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard, which is classified as Holodomor denial literature by the United States Library of Congress. [2]
The book states that the human-made Soviet famine of 1930–1933 in the Soviet Union was not the “deliberately planned genocide of Ukrainians by the Soviet government”, [3] but rather a myth sourced from Ukrainian fascists and anti-Soviet organizations in the West. [4] : 403 It cast the "fraud" as originated by the German Nazis, and perpetuated by the CIA along with the supposedly CIA-linked Harvard University. [5] [4] : 403
Tottle's critics regard him as a "Soviet apologist", [6] or a "denunciator" of the famine. [7] Tottle has been defended by the Stalin Society, [8] author Jeff Coplon, educator Grover Furr, and the Swedish Communist Party, all of whom insist that his book is valid historical research that exposed the "myth of the famine-genocide [...] once and for all". [9] Tottle's work was submitted to the International Commission of Inquiry Into the 1932–33 Famine in Ukraine and was examined as evidence during the Brussels sitting of the commission. [10]
Tottle was born in Quebec, but later lived mainly in Western Canada. He had various jobs throughout his working life, including photo-lab technician, fine artist, miner and steelworker. As a trade union activist, he edited The Challenger, a journal of the United Steelworkers, from 1975 to 1985. Tottle also researched labour history and worked as a union organiser, for example among Chicano farm workers in California and Native Indian farm workers in Manitoba. Tottle has written for various Canadian and American publications. [11]
Douglas Tottle is mostly known for his book Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: the Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard in which he argues that the theory that the Soviet famine of 1932–33 was intentionally orchestrated by the USSR, was a creation of Nazis propagandists, thence perpetuated in America by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. [12] Tottle argues that although mistakes in Soviet economic policy were contributors to the famine, other factors including kulak sabotage, hoarding of grain, weather conditions and foreign sanctions also contributed. [12]
Tottle writes that he is more interested in the "Nazi and fascist connections" and the "coverups of wartime collaboration". [13] In 1988, the International Commission of Inquiry Into the 1932–33 Famine in Ukraine was set up to establish whether the famine existed and its cause. Tottle was invited by the commission to attend the hearings, but did not respond.[ citation needed ] Tottle's book was examined during the Brussels sitting of the commission, [10] held between May 23–27, 1988, with testimony from various expert witnesses. Commission president Jacob Sundberg subsequently concluded that Tottle was not alone in doubting a "famine-genocide", alluding to the fact that material included in his book could not have been made available without official Soviet assistance. [14] However, Sundberg also concluded that "the evidence shows that the famine situation was well-known in Moscow from the bottom to the top. Very little or nothing was done to provide some relief to the starving masses. On the contrary, a great deal was done to deny the famine, to make it invisible to visitors, and to prevent relief being brought." [15]
Anne Applebaum wrote that institutes of the Soviet government contributed to its writing, reviewed manuscripts and that Soviet diplomats also promoted the book. [4] She also states that this may have been a political response to the publication of Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow in the preceding year. [4]
The Soviet Union introduced forced collectivization of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during the ascension of Joseph Stalin. It began during and was part of the first five-year plan. The policy aimed to integrate individual landholdings and labour into nominally collectively-controlled and openly or directly state-controlled farms: Kolkhozes and Sovkhozes accordingly. The Soviet leadership confidently expected that the replacement of individual peasant farms by collective ones would immediately increase the food supply for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for the processing industry, and agricultural exports via state-imposed quotas on individuals working on collective farms. Planners regarded collectivization as the solution to the crisis of agricultural distribution that had developed from 1927. This problem became more acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrialization program, meaning that more food would be needed to keep up with urban demand.
The Holodomor, also known as the Ukrainian Famine, was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet famine of 1930–1933 was a famine in the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine and different parts of Russia, including Kazakhstan, Northern Caucasus, Kuban Region, Volga Region, the South Urals, and West Siberia. Major factors included the forced collectivization of agriculture as a part of the First Five-Year Plan and forced grain procurement from farmers. These factors in conjunction with a massive investment in heavy industry decreased the agricultural workforce. Estimates conclude that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died from starvation across the Soviet Union.
James E. Mace was an American historian, professor, and researcher of the Holodomor.
Holodomor denial is the claim that the Holodomor, a 1932–33 man-made famine that killed millions in Soviet Ukraine, did not occur or diminishing its scale and significance.
The International Commission of Inquiry Into the 1932–1933 Famine in Ukraine was set up in 1984 and was initiated by the World Congress of Free Ukrainians to study and investigate the 1932-1933 man-made famine that killed millions in Ukraine. Members of Commission selected and invited by World Congress of Free Ukrainians. None of them represent own country or country authority/institution and act as individual. Most of them are retired jurists, one of them died before Commission finish their investigations. The Commission was funded by donations from the worldwide Ukrainian diaspora.
In 1932–1933, a man-made famine, known as the Holodomor, killed 3.3–5 million people in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, included in a total of 5.5–8.7 million killed by the broader Soviet famine of 1930–1933. At least 3.3 million ethnic Ukrainians died as a result of the famine in the USSR. Scholars debate whether there was an intent to starve millions of Ukrainians to death or not.
The US Commission on the Ukraine Famine was a commission to study the Holodomor, a 1932–33 man-made famine that killed millions in Ukraine.
Collectivization in Ukraine during the period when it was part of the Soviet Union, and was officially called the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, was part of the policy of collectivization in the USSR and dekulakization. It was pursued between 1928 and 1933 with the purpose to consolidate individual land and labour into collective farms called kolkhoz and to eliminate enemies of the working class. The idea of collective farms was seen by peasants as a revival of serfdom.
The Holodomor was a 1932–33 man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine and adjacent Ukrainian-inhabited territories that killed millions of Ukrainians. Opinions and beliefs about the Holodomor vary widely among nations. It is considered a genocide by Ukraine, and Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has lobbied for the famine to be considered a genocide internationally. By 2022, the Holodomor was recognized as a genocide by the parliaments of 23 countries and the European Parliament, and it is recognized as a part of the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 by Russia. As of June 2023, 35 countries recognise the Holodomor as a genocide.
Mass killings under communist regimes occurred through a variety of means during the 20th century, including executions, famine, deaths through forced labour, deportation, starvation, and imprisonment. Some of these events have been classified as genocides or crimes against humanity. Other terms have been used to describe these events, including classicide, democide, red holocaust, and politicide. The mass killings have been studied by authors and academics and several of them have postulated the potential causes of these killings along with the factors which were associated with them. Some authors have tabulated a total death toll, consisting of all of the excess deaths which cumulatively occurred under the rule of communist states, but these death toll estimates have been criticised. Most frequently, the states and events which are studied and included in death toll estimates are the Holodomor and the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, the Great Chinese Famine and the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China, and the Cambodian genocide in Democratic Kampuchea.
The Great Turn or Great Break was the radical change in the economic policy of the USSR from 1928 to 1929, primarily consisting of the process by which the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921 was abandoned in favor of the acceleration of collectivization and industrialization and also a cultural revolution. The term came from the title of Joseph Stalin's article "Year of the Great Turn" published on November 7, 1929, the 12th anniversary of the October Revolution. David R. Marples argues that the era of the Great Break lasted until 1934.
Kulak, also kurkul or golchomag, was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned over 3 ha of land towards the end of the Russian Empire. In the early Soviet Union, particularly in Soviet Russia and Azerbaijan, kulak became a vague reference to property ownership among peasants who were considered hesitant allies of the Bolshevik Revolution. In Ukraine during 1930–1931, there also existed a term of podkulachnik ; these were considered "sub-kulaks".
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine is a 1986 book by British historian Robert Conquest published by the Oxford University Press. It was written with the assistance of historian James Mace, a junior fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, who started doing research for the book following the advice of the director of the institute. Conquest wrote the book in order "to register in the public consciousness of the West a knowledge of and feeling for major events, involving millions of people and millions of deaths, which took place within living memory."
Holodomor: Voices of Survivors is a 2015 Canadian short documentary film by filmmaker Ariadna Ochrymovych about the 1932–33 Holodomor famine in Soviet Ukraine. It documents oral history from Ukrainian Canadian survivors of the Holodomor, which is recognized by Ukraine, Canada and 28 other countries as of 2023 as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Ochrymovych conducted and filmed over 100 interviews across Canada.
Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet revolutionary and dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely. The scholarly consensus affirms that archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data far superior to sources used prior to 1991, such as statements from emigres and other informants.
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine is a 2017 non-fiction book by American-Polish historian Anne Applebaum, focusing on the history of the Holodomor. The book won the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize.
Fred Erwin Beal (1896–1954) was an American labor-union organizer whose critical reflections on his work and travel in the Soviet Union divided left-wing and liberal opinion. In 1929 he had been a cause célèbre when, in Gastonia, North Carolina, he was convicted in an irregular trial of conspiracy in the strike-related killing of a local police chief. But having escaped to the Soviet Union, his decision in 1933 to return and bear witness to the costs of Stalin's collectivist policies, including famine in Ukraine, was disparaged and resisted by many of his erstwhile supporters.
This is a select bibliography of English-language books and journal articles about the history of Ukraine. Book entries have references to journal reviews about them when helpful and available. Additional bibliographies can be found in many of the book-length works listed below. See the bibliography section for several additional book and chapter-length bibliographies from academic publishers and online bibliographies from historical associations and academic institutions.
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