Famine in Ukraine 1932- 1933

|rnrri| SHEVCHENKO “П=Л“ SCIENTIFIC |l—П—11 SOCIETY, USA Famine in Ukraine 1932 - 1933: Genocide by Other Means TARAS HUMCZAK and ROMAM SERBYN TARAS HUNCZAK AND ROMAN SERBYN FAMINE IN UKRAINE 1932-1933: GENOCIDE BY OTHER MEANS SHEVCHENKO SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY, USA Famine in Ukraine 1932 - 1933: Genocide by Other Means Edited by Taras Hunczak and Roman Serbyn NEW YORK, 2007 This is a publication of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, Inc. 63 Fourth Avenue New York, NY 10003 USA Copyright © Shevchenko Scientific Society, Inc. Library Card Control Number: 2007936443 Printed by COMPUTOPRINT CORP., Clifton, New Jersey Tel.: (973) 574-8800 Fax: (973) 574-8887 E-mail: [email protected] 4 7-10 million to death during artificially-created^mine 1932-1933 k ЛИШ i& f 5 Table of Contents Preface ...........................................................................................................9 Introduction "Genocide by any other Name".....................................11 Henry R. Huttenbach The Famine of 1932-1933: A Genocide by Other Means..................13 Taras Hunczak The Terror-Famine and the State of Ukrainian Studies ....................20 Mark von Hagen Walter Duranty: A Liar for a Cause ....................................................30 Taras Hunczak The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 and the United Nations Convention on Genocide..........................................................................34 Roman Serbyn Significance of newly discovered archival documents for understanding the causes and consequences of the famine-genocide of 1932-1933 in Ukraine............................................ 84 Yuri Shapoval Demographic Dimensions of the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine.......... 98 Oleh Wolowyna Documents.................................................................................................115 Eyewitness Famine Accounts.................................................................147 Index..........................................................................................................152 7 Preface The Ukrainian tragedy of 1932 - 1933, as a man-made famine, has been documented in detail by numerous authors and recognized by many governments, including the United States Congress, as intentional policy of genocide by the Kremlin against the Ukrainian people. Some schol ars, nevertheless, refer to what was basically a policy of genocide against the Ukrainian people in Kuban (Northern Caucasus) and in Ukraine as “the Soviet Famine”. If that was the case, i.e., if the famine effected the entire Soviet Union, then one might ask the question: Why did Stalin is sue a Decree on January 22, 1933 closing the borders of Russia and Bela rus to the Ukrainians? Wouldn’t Stalin’s Decree suggest that the food situation was much better in those two republics? Perhaps we should ask ourselves another question: What lesson does the intentional policy of starving to death primarily, but not exclusively, of the Ukrainian farmers, whom Stalin considered to be the carriers of national identity, convey to us and to the future generations? 9 The objective of this small collection is to provide the reader with a concise and comprehensive statement about the Ukrainian tragedy - the man-made Famine of 1932 - 1933. The first two assays in the collection were delivered as lectures in November 2006 in the Dag Hammarskjold Library Auditorium of the United Nations by Professor of History at Co lumbia University Mark von Hagen and Professor Emeritus of Rutgers University Taras Hunczak. The next two scholarly articles, written by Professor Roman Serbyn and Professor Yuri Shapoval provide the im portant details, which serve as the basis for reliable generalizations. The chapter by Dr. Oleh Wolowyna, a leading specialist in Ukrainian demog raphy, analyzes the state of Ukrainian population after 1933. The book also addresses the role of Walter Duranty in misleading the American people and the World about the tragedy of 1932 -1933. We have also decided to include in the book some major documents, which convey the real intention and determination of the communist leadership in committing the genocide in Ukraine. We wish to thank Mykola Darmochwal for his technical assistance in the preparation of the book and Dr. Orest Popovych for his editorial assistance. We are also grateful to Dr. Assya Humesky and Serhiy Zhykharev for their translations and to Tamara Gallo Olexy for providing some of the eyewitness accounts of the tragedy of 1932 - 1933. Taras Hunczak andRoman Serbyn 10 Introduction "Genocide by any other Name” The twentieth century is scarred by mega-killings of countless mil lions of civilians by their own governments. Many of these multi murders - state crimes - called for an appropriate label, a classification that set them apart, hence the term 'genocide' which, since 1948 with the passing of the United Nations Genocide Convention has entered into pro fessional and general vocabularies, but not without occasional sharp con troversy as to the accuracy of the labeling. That is the case with the 1932-1933 Stalinist induced State Famine which struck the Ukraine re gion the heaviest. Flagrant mendacious denials aside, the problematics surrounding the interpretation whether what transpired in the early thirties was a bona fide genocide or something else needs to be explained. The Great Hun ger, or Holodomor, first has to be seen in the broader context of extreme state violence that raged throughout the recently formed Soviet Union, of which, at the time, Ukraine was a reluctant constituent part. Since 1928 Stalin - having outflanked his major rivals - was engaged in a dual strat egy: 1) consolidation of uncontested, personal dictatorial power; and 2) transforming the Soviet Union into a centralized modem industrial eco nomic giant and military power. Both required the application of radical violence to achieve compliance since there were still numerous sources of potent opposition to Stalin's vision of a revolutionary society, among them Ukrainian ethnic- motivated secessionism. One wave of violence that swept across the USSR was the purging from the Communist Party of the Old Guard which had made the 1917- 1918 October Revolution and whose loyalties had been with Lenin and the other luminaries such as Bukharin and Kamenev and not with Stalin. Among those erased from the ranks of the Party were those harboring pro-Ukrainian aspirations. Another wave of state violence affected all those in the agricultural segment of the economy. Since 1928 the gov ernment sought to transform the farmers with their small private plots of land into rural proletariat living and working collectively in huge state 11 farms. The opposition bordered on a bloody civil war in which tens of millions of farmers - at the heart of which was the Ukrainian farmer - were uprooted, killed or deported to Siberia where they were worked to death on huge industrial projects. Lastly, a third storm of violence rocked the Soviet Union, the program of accelerated industrialization. As the ranks of factory workers expanded the government had to provide suffi cient supplies of food. That meant forcibly requisitioning grain causing serious and, finally, lethal shortages as famine set in from Belarus in the west to the vast steppes of Kazakhstan in Central Asia, Caught in the middle - suffering countless millions in countryside and cities alike - was the Ukrainian population. At the very geographic heart of this maelstrom of multi-tiered state induced mass violence lay the Ukrainian people, whose suffering was out of proportion to that of other populations and regions, naturally evoking the question whether within the overall victimization throughout the So viet Union there was not a specific Ukrainian suffering. Had they, so the question goes, been targeted as Ukrainians per se? Seen through the prism of Soviet reality the answer is both yes and no. There is no doubt that Stalinism and its brutal vision and practices of social engineering made little distinction between those who stood in his way, regardless of regional distinctions. Nevertheless, on closer examination, the severity of the death toll in Ukraine gave rise to another interpretation. As this book eminently demonstrates, the experience of violence in Ukraine pointed to more than implementing state goals by all means available. The mega killings and mass deportations as well as the murder of political elites and willful destruction of cultural monuments had an existential dimension amounting to genocide. As the documents unambi guously reveal, underlying the Great Famine was the official intention to threaten the very existence of Ukrainianism. Thus, within the war to re shape the Soviet Union lurked another war, the USSR versus Ukraine. The statistics and raw data indicate this; the contemporary documents confirm it. That it was genocide before the term was coined ten years later in 1943 is no longer to be doubted. What Stalin committed was the crime of extermination. The Great Famine was an integral part of that crime. Henry R. Huttenbach (Professor Emeritus, CCNY-CUNY- Founder and editor Journalof o f Genocide Research 12 The Famine of 1932-1933: *j|f Genocide by Other Means Ladies and Gentlemen: The Western World - having experienced the Renaissance of hu manism, which freed the individual from the Medieval spirit of confor mity and, building upon that experience, proceeded to establish the prin ciple of the natural rights of man in the course of the 17th and 18th cen turies, ending

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