The Holodomor,also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great 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 1932–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union.
Throughout Russian history famines and droughts have been a common feature,often resulting in humanitarian crises traceable to political or economic instability,poor policy,environmental issues and war. Droughts and famines in the Russian Empire tended to occur fairly regularly,with famine occurring every 10–13 years and droughts every five to seven years. Golubev and Dronin distinguish three types of drought according to productive areas vulnerable to droughts:Central,Southern,and Eastern.
Douglas Tottle was a Canadian trade union activist and journalist,author of Fraud,Famine,and Fascism:The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard. Tottle asserts that the idea that the Holodomor was intentionally created by the Soviet government originated from propaganda spread by former Nazis,anti-communists and Ukrainian nationalists,sometimes posing as academics in Canadian universities. Tottle's critics regard him as a "Soviet apologist",or a "denunciator" of the famine. Tottle has been defended by the Stalin Society,author Jeff Coplon,and the Swedish Communist Party,who insist that his book is valid historical research that exposed the "myth of the famine-genocide [...] once and for all". 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.
The Soviet famine of 1930–1933 was a famine in the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union,including Ukraine,Northern Caucasus,Volga Region,Kazakhstan,the South Urals,and West Siberia. Estimates conclude that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died of famine across the Soviet Union. Major contributing factors to the famine include:the forced collectivization in the Soviet Union of agriculture as a part of the First Five-Year Plan,and forced grain procurement,combined with rapid industrialization and a decreasing agricultural workforce. Sources disagree on the possible role of drought. During this period the Soviet government escalated its persecution against the kulaks. Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin,had ordered kulaks,who were wealthy,land-owning farmers "to be liquidated as a class",and became a target for the state. Persecution against the kulaks had been ongoing since the Russian Civil War,and had never fully subsided. Once collectivization became widely implemented,the persecution against the kulaks increased which culminated in a Soviet campaign of political repression,including arrests,deportations,and executions of large numbers of the kulaks in 1929–1932. Some kulaks responded by carrying out acts of sabotage such as killing livestock and destroying crops intended for consumption by factory workers. Despite the death toll mounting,Stalin chose to continue the Five Year Plan and collectivization. By 1934,the Soviet Union established an industrial baseline,however it did come at the cost of millions of lives.
James E. Mace was an American historian,professor,and researcher of the Holodomor.
Holodomor denial is the claim that the Holodomor,a large-scale,man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932–1933,did not occur. Officially,the Soviet Union denied the famine and suppressed information about it from its very beginning until the 1980s. This was also circulated by some Western journalists and intellectuals. It was echoed at the time of the famine by some prominent Western journalists,including The New York Times' Walter Duranty.
In 1932–1933,a famine known as the Holodomor killed 3.3–3.9 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 1932–1933. At least 3.3 million ethnic Ukrainians died as a result of the famine in the Soviet Union. Scholars debate "whether the man-made Soviet famine was a central act in a campaign of genocide," or whether it was intended to drive Ukrainian peasants into "collectives and ensure a steady supply of grain for Soviet industrialization."
The US Commission on the Ukraine Famine was a commission set up by Senate resolution S2458 on September 21,1984. The 99th Congress,on January 3,1985,passed appropriations to fund the Famine Commission and on April 23,1986,the Commission held its organizational meeting at the Rayburn House Office Building "to conduct a study of the 1932–33 Ukrainian Famine in order to expand the world’s knowledge of the famine and provide the American public with a better understanding of the Soviet system by revealing the Soviet role". Its findings were delivered to the US Congress on April 22,1988. The final report to Congress found that the man-made famine was an act of genocide against the people of Ukraine carried out by the Soviets. At its final meeting on April 19,1986,Commissioner Ulana Mazurkevich condemned the actions of Walter Duranty,who knowingly sent out false dispatches about the famine to The New York Times.
The causes of the Holodomor,the famine that ravaged Soviet Ukraine during 1932 and 1933,resulting in the death of around 3–5 million people,are the subject of scholarly and political debate,such as the Holodomor genocide question. Some historians believe the famine was the unintended consequence of problems arising from Soviet agricultural collectivization implemented to support the program of rapid industrialization in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Other historians believe policies were intentionally designed to cause the famine. Some of them suggest that the famine may fall under the definition of genocide that entered international law with the 1948 Genocide Convention.
The Holodomor was a famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and adjacent Cossack territories between 1932 and 1933,in which millions of Ukrainians died from starvation. 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 2019 the Holodomor was recognized as a genocide by fifteen out of 195 other states,as a crime against humanity by the European Parliament,and as part of the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 by Russia.
Holodomor –The Unknown Ukrainian Tragedy (1932-1933) is a book coordinated by JoséEduardo Franco and Beata Cieszynska,published by Grácio Editor in June 2013.
The National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide,formerly known as the Memorial in Commemoration of the Holodomor-Genocide in Ukraine,is Ukraine's national museum and a world-class centre devoted to the victims of the Holodomor of 1932–1933. The museum was opened on the day of the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor in 2008. It gained the status of a national museum in 2010. The museum is located on the Pechersk Hills on the right bank of the Dnieper river in Kyiv,adjacent to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.
The Kazakh famine of 1930–1933,also known the Kazakh catastrophe,or Asharshylyk was a famine during which approximately 1.5 million people died in the Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic,then part of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic in the Soviet Union,of whom 1.3 million were ethnic Kazakhs. An estimated 38 to 42 percent of all Kazakhs died,the highest percentage of any ethnic group killed by the Soviet famine of 1930–1933. Other sources state that as many as 2.0 to 2.3 million died.
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."
The Holodomor Memorial to Victims of the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–1933 was opened in Washington,D.C.,United States,on November 7,2015. Congress approved creation of the Holodomor Memorial in 2006.
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. A minority of authors and journalists maintain that "statistics can never fully describe what happened".
Genocide recognition politics are efforts to have a certain event (re)interpreted as a "genocide" or officially designated as such. Such efforts may occur regardless of whether the event meets the definition of genocide laid out in the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Holodomor Memorial Day or Holodomor Remembrance Day is an annual commemoration of the victims of the Holodomor,the 1932–33 famine that killed millions in Ukraine,falling on the fourth Saturday of November. The day is also an official annual commemoration in Canada,and observed by Ukrainian diaspora communities in other countries.
Valentina Kuryliw is a historian and educator specializing in the Ukrainian Holodomor genocide of 1932–1933. Now retired,she served as the Department Head of History and Social Sciences for the Toronto District School Board with over 35 years of teaching experience. She is a methodologist,worked with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto training young history,law and sociology teachers and evaluating their achievements. She has also travelled extensively throughout Ukraine teaching teachers about human rights,critical thinking skills and the Holodomor in many of its regions since 1993;"Every year Valentina Kuryliw comes to Ukraine –a Canadian of Ukrainian descent,a methodological teacher,a history specialist from Toronto. She conducts courses in the summer in Lviv,Odesa,Ternopil,Lutsk,Khmelnytsky,Donetsk,Kharkiv and thus shows Ukrainian history teachers that teaching can be different. Ms. Valentina has made an invaluable contribution to the development of Ukrainian methodological thought." She taught the history of Ukraine at the Tsiopa Palijiw Ukrainian School Toronto where she was assistant director. From 2009,she is the chair of the National Holodomor Education Committee. of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress;from 2013,the Director of Education of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies,University of Alberta;from 2009,she is a member of the Board of the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre (Toronto). She is a permanent member of the Ontario History and Social Studies Teacher's Association (OHASSTA).
