• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

July 26, 1983 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS 21019 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS THE PEOPLE'S PARADISE Ukrainian language, literature, and arts to ence Monitor correspondent William Henry flourish. By the end of the decade, however, Chamberlin wrote soon thereafter, "but the regime had come to perceive both stark, outright famine, with its victims HON. JACK FIELDS trends as subversive. The NEP was sustain­ counted in millions." OF TEXAS ing a private peasantry-both Russian and One eyewitness, a city resident, described IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES non-Russian-that was hostile to the urban­ a visit to his parents' village: Tuesday, July 26, 1983 based Bolsheviks' collectivist goals; indeed, "Although it was not long since I had last the Party appeared to be drowning in a been there, I could hardly recognize it. The e Mr. FIELDS. Mr. Speaker, some "peasant sea." Meanwhile the cultural re­ Moscow government had taken away all the form of socialism/communism is domi­ laxation associated with NEP threatened to food long before. Now the village was bereft nant in many nations and every conti­ undermine the regime's decidedly great of even cats and dogs. The officials hunted nent. The idea of socialism is especial­ Russian character. And, as Stalin noted in them and put them into a pound, but the ly attractive to intellectuals who are 1925, both developments complemented hungry people caught and ate them. People each other: "The peasant question is the avoided one another in calm, unreal atmos­ able to maintain a comfortable dis­ basis, the quintessence, of the national phere for fear of being eaten. My mother tance from actual Socialist practices. question. That explains the fact that the and a few of her neighbors told me how H. Though socialism is a god that fails peasantry constitutes the main army of the Zhuk ate his mother; how a woman they continuously, and causes more human national movement, that there is no power­ knew ate her children; and how H. Skryn­ suffering and tragedy than any idea or ful national movement without the peasant nyk ate his mother." practice in history, there are those army, nor can there be.... " "This kind of grim, stark chronicle could who stubbornly cling to its high­ Stalin's solution to the peasant problem have been compiled in almost any village in minded idealism. They religously close was collectivization. The richer, more pro­ the Ukraine in that terrible winter and ductive, and politically more troublesome spring of 1932-33," wrote Chamberlin. up their eyes to the reality that the peasants-kulaks-were deported to Siberia "Every village I visited reported a death Socialist promise of instant utopia and thereby "liquidated as a class." There­ rate of not less than ten per cent." Small brings only the tyranny of a real dys­ maining "poor" and "middle" peasants were wonder that Malcolm Muggeridge, who trav­ topia. herded into collective farms. They respond­ eled to the Ukraine in the summer of 1933 It is for them that the following ed by slaughtering their animals, working as a correspondent for the Manchester glimpse of reality is provided. less, and engaging in "terrorist" acts against Guardian, recently termed the famine the [From the American Spectator, August representatives of the regime. Not surpris­ "most terrible thing I have ever seen." 1983] ingly, production plummeted; state extrac­ Most Ukrainians would agree with Cham­ tion of grain, however, increased. In all, berlin that "this famine may fairly be called THE GREAT UKRAINIAN FAMINE Soviet agriculture received a blow from political because it was not the result of any <By Alexander J. Motyl) which it has still not fully recovered. But overwhelming natural catastrophe." They Throughout the world this year Ukraini­ from Stalin's viewpoint, collectivization was would also view it, however, as a deliberate­ ans are commemorating a grisly fiftieth an­ a success: peasant opposition to Soviet ly anti-Ukrainian policy of the "Moscow niversary. Thanks to Stalin, a great famine power had been broken once and for all. government"; Stalin, they allege, master­ ravaged their homeland in 1933, reducing Stalin also achieved a breakthough on the mined the scheme in order to solve his peas­ the breadbasket of the Soviet Union to little non-Russian front. "National Communists" ant and Ukrainian problems with one blow. more than a graveyard. Before the year was were forced back into line; the cultural free­ Considering the Soviet dictator's exception­ out, over five million Ukrainian peasants doms of the 1920s were revoked; and, by ally brutal treatment of the non-Russians had died a slow and gruesome death. Wrote 1933, the tsarist policy of Russification was and his mass deportations of the entire Che­ one survivor: formally reintroduced. Local nationalisms, chen, lngush, Balkar, Karachai, Kalmyk, "People scoured the fields for roots of all it was officially decreed, were more danger­ and Crimean Tatar populations during and kinds, stripped the trees of their bark, ous than Russian chauvinism. In the after World War II, this interpretation, caught mice and gophers, ate Ukraine, major political show trials in the clearly, is not implausible. Yet, as formulat­ carrion. They even devoured the carri­ early 1930s marked the beginning of a cen­ ed, it invites skepticism: if Stalin's goal had on of horses infected with glanders and trally directed secret-police terror that been genocide, then why did the authorities then the authorities had them shot. They lasted through the decade. not confiscate all the grain harvested in the fed on the mash left over from the previous Why did collectivization hit the Ukraini­ Ukraine? Would even Stalin have jeopard­ year, which was no longer considered suita­ ans with particular severity? First of all, the ized his economic plans by deliberately dev­ ble for feeding to livestock. They boiled tempo of collectivization in the Ukraine, astating a country that figured so impor­ dried animal hides. They prepared pancakes which served as a kind of testing ground for tantly to them? and fritters from leaves and other inedible Stalin's agricultural experiments, was more The traditional interpretation among substances. They even ate toadstools.... " rapid than in the rest of the USSR. And Western Sovietologists views the famine as A catastrophe of such dimensions ranks as second, the grain quotas imposed on the an unplanned and largely unavoidable by­ one of the twentieth century's prime exam­ Ukraine were disproportionately higher. product of the revolutionary zeal and bu­ ples of mass destruction; yet, it continues to Thus, in the more equitable NEP days of reaucratic shortsightedness that character­ remain largely unknown to the world. 1926, the Ukraine provided the state with ized the collectivization campaign. Further­ Soviet mendacity, Western gullibility, and a 3.3 million tons of grain, or 21 percent of its more, it is argued, famine generally affected readiness on both sides to condone the liqui­ total harvest. In 1930, the first full year of the USSR's most fertile areas-not only the dation of nations and classes thought to collectivization, it delivered 7.7 million tons Ukraine, but the North Caucasus and Cen­ stand in the way of "progress" have con­ out of a harvest of 23.1, or 33 percent. Peas­ tral Volga regions as well. This supposedly spired to transform a major human tragedy ant resistance to collectivization caused the means that a policy of extracting the most into a forgotten historical footnote. In good harvest to drop to 18.3 million tons in 1931, grain from the most productive regions­ Soviet fashion, the dead Ukrainian peasants but the Ukraine's quota remained at 7.7-an that is, economics, and not great-power have been relegated to the status of "non­ extortionately high 42 percent. Although chauvinism-was to blame for the famine. person." the quota was reduced to 6.6 million tons in Other scholars, however, consider the The 1920s had been years of plenty in the 1932, grain production fell to 14.6, so that famine to have been a deliberate political Ukraine, as well as in the entire USSR. The only 4.7 million tons, or 32 percent of the act. According ro an expert on the Stalin Communist Party's unenthusiastic accept­ harvest, could actually be collected. The era, British historian Robert Conquest: ance in 1921 of Lenin's "New Economic murderous grain requisitions of 1930-1932 "The famine can be blamed quite flatly on Policy" <NEP> sanctioning a limited reintro­ resulted in the outbreak of a country-wide Stalin. It is perhaps the only case in his­ duction of capitalism had allowed the famine-"not hardship, or privation, or dis­ tory of a purely man-made famine. It is also Ukrainian peasantry to prosper and the tress, or food shortage," as Christian Sci- the only major famine whose very existence e This "bullet" symbol identifies statements or insertions which are not spoken by the Member on the floor. 21020 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS July 26, 1983 was ignored or denied by the governmental Westerners to be more than willing to give army said in 1981, "a Sandismo without authorities, and even to a large degree suc­ the Soviet Union the benefit of the doubt. Marxism-Leninism cannot be revolution­ cessfully concealed from world opinion. Billy Graham's infamous behavior on his ary.'' "There seems little doubt that the main trip to the USSR last year was but one man­ The revolution also proclaims itself a issue was simply crushing the peasantry at ifestation of this attitude. friend of Christians. But its theological sup. any cost. One high official told a Ukrainian Directly responsible, however, were those porters stress that Christianity without who later defected that the 1933 harvest Western admirers of Stalin's "bold experi­ Marxism-Leninsim cannot be true Christi­ 'was a test of our strength and their endur­ ment" all too ready to overlook images that anity.

Load more

  36

Copy Link