williams20081226ThreeArticles.html

1. REMEMBER THE HOLODOMOR
The Soviet starvation of Ukraine, 75 years later

By Cathy Young, Contributing editor to Reason magazine
The Weekly Standard, Volume 014, Issue 12, Monday, Wash, D.C., Dec 8, 2008

This year marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most horrific chapters in the history of the Soviet Union: the great famine the Ukrainians call Holodomor, "murder by starvation." This catastrophe, which killed an estimated 6 to 10 million people in 1932-33, was largely the product of deliberate Soviet policies. Inevitably, then, its history is fodder for acrimonious disputes.

Ukraine--which, with Canada and a few other countries, observed Holodomor Remembrance Day on November 23 [Action Ukraine Report Editor..the official Remembrance Day in Ukraine is always the fourth Saturday of November which was November 22, 2008 not November 23] --seeks international recognition for a Ukrainian "genocide." Russia denounces that demand as political exploitation of a wider tragedy. Some Russian human rights activists are skeptical of both positions.

Meanwhile, the famine remains little known in the West, despite efforts by the Ukrainian diaspora. Indeed, the West has its own inglorious history with
regard to the famine, starting with the deliberate cover-up by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty.

In the late 1980s, the famine gained new visibility thanks to Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine" (1987) and the TV documentary "Harvest of Despair,: aired in the United States and Canada. A backlash from the left was quick to follow. Revisionist Sovietologist J. Arch Getty accused Conquest of parroting the propaganda of "exiled nationalists."

And in January 1988, the Village Voice ran a lengthy essay by Jeff Coplon (now a contributing editor at New York magazine) titled "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust: A 55-Year-Old Famine Feeds the Right." Coplon sneered at "the prevailing vogue of anti-Stalinism" and dismissed as absurd the idea that the famine had been created by the Communist regime. Such talk, he asserted, was meant to justify U.S. imperialism and whitewash Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis.

By the time Coplon wrote, however, the Soviet regime was dying. The partial opening of Soviet archives soon confirmed the extent to which Stalin and his
henchmen knowingly used hunger to punish resistance and beat the peasantry into submission. Among the finds was a direct order by Stalin to cordon off
starving villages and intercept peasants trying to flee in search of food.

The post-Soviet leadership of both Russia and Ukraine was willing to acknowledge the Terror-Famine, though differences soon emerged on whether it
should be regarded as a Ukrainian genocide or equal-opportunity mass murder.

Ukrainian-Russian relations began to deteriorate after the "Orange Revolution" of late 2004. Russia under Vladimir Putin was sliding deeper into authoritarianism and anti-Western nationalism, while Ukraine, led by President Viktor Yushchenko, sought closer ties to the West. Even as the political mood in Russia began to emphasize the alleged positive aspects of the Soviet past, Yushchenko promoted a view of Soviet-era Ukraine as a "captive nation" under a foreign boot.

In November 2006, the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill proclaiming the Holodomor a genocide and making Holodomor denial "unlawful." An escalation
of rhetoric followed; a 2007 statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry accused "certain political circles" in Ukraine of insulting the memory of non-Ukrainian famine victims. Since then, the pro-government Russian press has published dozens of articles assailing Ukraine's stance on the Holodomor as an insidious anti-Russian ploy.

This year, President Dmitry Medvedev declined an invitation to Holodomor Remembrance Day ceremonies in Kiev in a petulant letter that dismissed "talk
of the so-called Holodomor" as an "immoral" attempt to give a shared tragedy a nationalist spin and also took a swipe at Ukraine's desire to join NATO.

Some independent Russian commentators accuse both governments of playing politics. Thus, an article by St. Petersburg-based scholar Kirill Aleksandrov on the www.Gazeta.ru website on November 17 argued that the Terror-Famine was not a genocide in the classic sense but a "stratocide"--mass extermination based on social class--directed at the peasantry. Yet, he wrote, the Kremlin cannot fully confront this crime since that would conflict with its quest to build a state ideology that incorporates the "positive value" of the Soviet period.

"Unfortunately," Aleksandrov summed up, "the millions of victims of collectivization will be used in Ukraine only for political manipulation and the creation of Russophobic myths, while Russia will consistently try to erase their memory in order to preserve the legitimacy of the current regime, which cannot exist without appealing to Soviet historical tradition."

A starkly different view was offered by journalist Yulia Latynina on the website www.EJ.ru. Latynina noted that while Stalin's terror affected every segment of Soviet society, specific groups were sometimes singled out--among them the Ukrainian peasant class in the early 1930s. "Stalin was destroying the peasantry by herding it into collective farms," she wrote.

"It so happened that the wealthiest peasantry was in Ukraine. It so happened that Stalin was afraid of Ukraine's independence and undertook special efforts to break Ukraine." Supporters of Ukraine's position also deny that it is "Russophobic," pointing to Yushchenko's explicit statements that the Holodomor was a crime of the Soviet Communist regime, not the Russian people.

Which view is accurate? Scholars still disagree both on the scope of the famine and on its ethnic "specificity."

One of the most vocal opponents of the Ukrainian government's view is former Soviet dissident Alexander Babyonyshev (writing under the pen name Sergey Maksudov), now an émigré professor at Harvard, who studied the Terror-Famine in Soviet times when it was politically dangerous.

There is no question that the famine caused deaths beyond Ukraine. It is generally believed that about half of the victims were in Ukraine and the predominantly Ukrainian-populated Russian region of Kuban. The millions of others who perished included Russian peasants and close to a third of the population of Kazakhstan.

There is also no doubt that the famine was man-made. Most Soviet peasants resisted the collectivization that began in the 1930s. When joining collective farms was voluntary, few signed up, and many who did soon left. Forcible collectivization was met with peasant rebellions, ruthlessly suppressed, then with quiet resistance. When villagers realized that collective farming meant backbreaking labor for the state at slave wages, many staged work slowdowns.

As a result, grain production targets were not met at a time when Moscow relied on grain exports to finance industrialization. The regime then instituted a policy of ruthless confiscation of grain that left no food for the peasants; in many regions, villages that failed to meet the quota were also forced to surrender all other foodstuffs.

Recent articles detailing the Soviet regime's war on the peasantry, based on Soviet archives, describe a living hell: government agents going door to door confiscating food; families in recalcitrant villages forced out of their homes and left to freeze; men and women tortured to make them reveal hidden stockpiles of food; widespread cannibalism. These horrors were by no means limited to Ukraine.

It is nonetheless true that Stalin's fateful decision to blockade famine-stricken areas, issued in January 1933, was initially directed at Ukraine and Kuban. This has prompted French historian Nicolas Werth, coauthor of "The Black Book of Communism," to reconsider his view of the Terror-Famine as ethnically neutral class warfare.

In an address at the Harvard Ukrainian Institute on November 18, Werth said he now believes there is sufficient evidence to support the "national interpretation" of the famine.

This evidence, in his view, includes the fact that the Holodomor coincided with a Soviet campaign against Ukrainian nationalism, with purges and executions targeting Ukraine's political and cultural elites. Yet Werth concluded with a pointed plea to remember all the victims of the Communist war on the peasantry.

Recognition of the Holodomor as genocide is complicated by several factors. The ethnic component of the Terror-Famine in Ukraine was not driven by a nationalist animus against Ukrainians but by Stalin's paranoia about Ukrainian nationalism and alleged ties to Poland. Moreover, many of the people who carried out the exterminationist policies were ethnic Ukrainians.

Perhaps, as Russian historian Boris Sokolov has argued, a proper condemnation of Communist terror requires a new category: mass murder not motivated by ethnic hatred.

The scholarly and political debate will doubtless continue. Last September, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution declaring the Holodomor a genocide [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Editor: The U.S. Congress did not pass a resolution in September of 2008 directly resolving/declaring the Holodomor a genocide. A copy of the resolution that was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives is found in article two below.]; a month later, the European Parliament voted to recognize it as a "crime against humanity" but stopped short of the G-word.

Meanwhile, it seems that the only time Russia's government remembers the Russian victims of the Terror-Famine is when it needs them to counter Ukrainian claims about "the so-called Holodomor."

NOTE: Cathy Young is a contributing editor to Reason magazine.

LINK: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/861rmjep.asp

HRES 1314 EH
H. Res. 1314
In the House of Representatives, U. S.,
September 23, 2008.

Whereas in 1932 and 1933, an estimated seven to 10 million Ukrainian people perished at the will of the totalitarian Stalinist government of the former Soviet Union, which perpetrated a premeditated famine in Ukraine in an effort to break the nation's resistance to collectivization and communist occupation;

Whereas the Soviet Government deliberately confiscated grain harvests and starved millions of Ukrainian men, women, and children by a policy of forced collectivization that sought to destroy the nationally conscious movement for independence;

Whereas Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ordered the borders of Ukraine sealed to prevent anyone from escaping the man-made starvation and preventing any international food aid that would provide relief to the starving;

Whereas numerous scholars worldwide have worked to uncover the scale of the famine, including Canadian wheat expert Andrew Cairns who visited Ukraine in 1932 and was told that there was no grain `because the government had collected so much grain and exported it to England and Italy,' while simultaneously denying food aid to the people of Ukraine;

Whereas nearly a quarter of the rural population of Ukraine was eliminated due to forced starvation, while the entire nation suffered from the consequences of the prolonged lack of food;

Whereas the Soviet Government manipulated and censored foreign journalists, including New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, who knowingly denied not only the scope and magnitude, but also the existence, of a deadly man-made famine in his reports from Ukraine;

Whereas noted correspondents of the time were castigated by the Soviet Union for their accuracy and courage in depicting and reporting the famine in Ukraine, including Gareth Jones, William Henry Chamberlin, and Malcolm Muggeridge, who wrote, `[The farmers] will tell you that many have already died of famine and that many are dying every day; that thousands have been shot by the government and hundreds of thousands exiled';

Whereas in May 1934, former Congressman Hamilton Fish introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives (House Resolution 399 of the 73d Congress) which called for the condemnation of the Soviet Government for its acts of destruction against the Ukrainian people;

Whereas the United States Commission on the Ukraine Famine, formed on December 13, 1985, conducted a study with the goal of expanding the world's knowledge and understanding of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933, and concluded that the victims were `starved to death in a man-made famine' and that `Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-1933';

Whereas on May 15, 2003, in a special session, the Ukrainian Parliament acknowledged that the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor ) was engineered by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Government deliberately against the Ukrainian nation and called upon international recognition of the Holodomor ;

Whereas with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, archival documents became available that confirmed the deliberate and pre-meditated deadly nature of the famine, and that exposed the atrocities committed by the Soviet Government against the Ukrainian people; and

Whereas on October 13, 2006, the President of the United States signed into law Public Law 109-340 that authorized the Government of Ukraine 'to establish a memorial on Federal land in the District of Columbia to honor the victims of the Ukrainian famine-genocide of 1932-1933,' in recognition of the upcoming 75th anniversary of the tragedy in 2008: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) solemnly remembers the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933 and extends its deepest sympathies to the victims, survivors, and families of this tragedy;

(2) condemns the systematic violations of human rights, including the freedom of self-determination and freedom of speech, of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet Government;

(3) encourages dissemination of information regarding the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) in order to expand the world's knowledge of this man-made tragedy; and

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia.
GENERAL LEAVE
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Georgia?
There was no objection.
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am pleased to support this resolution that allows the House of Representatives to pause in remembrance of the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian famine of 1932 and 1933 and extend its sympathies to the victims, survivors and relatives of this tragedy. I commend my distinguished colleague, Representative Levin of Michigan, and the cochair of the Ukrainian Caucus in the House for introducing this important resolution.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Mr. Speaker, Ukraine was so renowned for its rich soil and high grain production that it was known as the ``bread basket of Europe.'' Such bounty serves only to amplify the magnitude of the country's loss: The deaths of nearly one-quarter of its entire rural population as a result of the Soviet policy of forced collectivism in 1932 and 1933.

This premeditated famine was intended to break the nation's resistance to Communist occupation and destroy its movement for independence. While 7 to 10 million Ukrainians were starving to death, millions of tons of grain were kept in reservoirs, sold or sent to other parts of the Soviet Union. Further compounding this tragedy, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ordered that the borders of Ukraine be sealed and that anyone trying to relocate family or children be severely punished or killed.

Mr. Speaker, the United States of America has never forgotten this tragedy that occurred in Ukraine 75 years ago. As early as May 1934, former Congressman Hamilton Fish introduced a resolution in this House that called for condemnation of the Soviet Government for its acts of destruction against the Ukrainian people.

The United States Commission on the Ukrainian Famine, which was established in December of 1985, worked to uncover the scale and the reasons for and the consequences of this terrible manmade famine. And in October 2006, President Bush signed a law authorizing the Government of Ukraine to construct a memorial in the District of Columbia to honor the victims of the famine.

Today, 17 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine is a strong ally of the United States. We fully support the efforts of this young democracy to strengthen its political institutions, its rule of law and civil society. It's so appropriate that we pause today to remember the victims of the famine and reaffirm our continued friendship and solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

I strongly support this resolution, and I urge my colleagues to join me.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I also rise in support of House Resolution 1314, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian famine, Holodomor, of 1932 and 1933.

The former Communist state known as the Soviet Union was controlled by a brutal regime that oppressed its own people as well as that of its neighbors. The scars left by the inhumane practices and policies of the Soviet leadership are still felt, despite the passage of 75 years since the famine in Ukraine and the passage of almost two decades since the Soviet regime's demise.

During 1932 and 1933, Joseph Stalin's Communist regime intentionally confiscated grain harvest from the Ukrainian people and prevented any foreign food from being shipped in to help those who were starving to death.

The famine inflicted on Ukraine by the Stalinist regime during those years killed millions of Ukrainians. It is one of the most stark examples of the former Soviet regime's cruel and horrific policies.

Among other items, this resolution notes the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian famine and expresses sympathy to the victims, survivors and
families of that man-made calamity; condemns the violation of human rights, the freedom of speech and of the self-determination of the Ukrainian people by the former Soviet regime; encourages expanding the world's knowledge about this man-made disaster; and, lastly, supports continued efforts in Ukraine to strengthen the principles of democracy and of a free-market economy.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this important measure.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, it is now my distinct pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished Congressman from Michigan, Congressman Sander Levin, who is the sponsor of this resolution and is the very distinguished cochair of the Ukraine Caucus in the House of Representatives.

(Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. LEVIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Scott, and I thank the chairman and the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee for bringing this to the floor.

I rise in support of this resolution, marking the 75th anniversary of the man-made famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933.

Recognizing this tragedy and remembering its victims are important for all of humanity, including 1.5 Ukrainian-Americans. It has special meaning to the people of Ukraine, who continue to struggle toward a more free, democratic, open society, and indeed to all of us who value freedom.

During the famine-genocide of 1932-33, 7 to 10 million Ukrainians were deliberately and systematically starved to death. We are familiar in this House with the terrible suffering caused by famines that are the result of natural forces, but the famine of 1932-33 is all the more tragic because it resulted from criminal acts and deliberate decisions by Soviet officials. Despite efforts by the Soviet Government at the time and afterward to hide the planned and systematic nature of this famine-genocide, it is clear that the Soviet Union used food as a weapon.

We in this country must persist in standing with those living under oppressive and tyrannical regimes as they struggle for their freedom. During the 109th Congress, we enacted a bill authorizing the Government of Ukraine to establish a memorial in Washington, D.C. honoring the victims of the Ukrainian famine-genocide. The Ukrainian Government and the Ukrainian-American community are working with the appropriate Federal agencies to identify a site for this memorial.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health and a true champion of human rights around the world.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her leadership, and thank Chairman Levin for sponsoring this very important resolution.

I rise in strong support of H. Res. 1314, commemorating and honoring the memory of victims of the abominable act perpetrated against the people of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933.

Seventy-five years ago, millions, and the estimates are as high as 10 million, men, women and children were murdered by starvation so that one man, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, could consolidate control over the Ukraine. In an attempt to secure collectivization and to break the spirit of the independent-minded Ukrainian peasants, Stalin ordered the expropriation of all the foods in the rural population. It was shipped to other areas of the Soviet Union or sold abroad. Peasants who refused to turn over grain to the state were deported or executed. Without food or grain, mass starvation ensued, as was Stalin's intention.

Madam Speaker, food was used as a weapon in a crime against humanity staggering in its scope. This famine was man-made, the planned consequence of a deliberate policy which aimed to wipe out a substantial part of the Ukrainian people in order to crush the spirit of those who remain. In short, genocide was committed against the Ukrainian people.

Madam Speaker, over the years I have read many works of Stalin's genocide against the people of Ukraine, but I recall a moment back in the 1980s when I saw the unforgettable documentary, Harvest of Sorrow. It documented and depicted the horrors of the famine, so that no one since has denied this mind-boggling crime and tragedy. In its bare, stark truth, it was one of the most moving films I have ever seen.

I also recall the fine work of the congressionally mandated Ukraine Famine Commission, which issued its well-documented report in 1988. I am happy that Mr. Levin's resolution notes that there were those in the West, including the New York Times correspondent Walt Duranty, who deliberately falsified their reporting so to cover up the famine because they wanted to ensure that the Soviet Union got ``a good press.''

The fact is that for over 40 years the planned famine was hardly spoken or written about in our country, due to an academic skepticism and silence enforced by political correctness. When Ukrainians and others tried to break through the wall of silence, they were treated with derision. This silence, which lasted from the 1930s through the publication of Harvest of Sorrow, made a sorry chapter in the history of American intellectual life.

Madam Speaker, this resolution will continue to recognize one of the most horrific events in the last century in the hopes that mass murders of this kind never happen again. I support this resolution unreservedly. I hope that the full membership of this body supports it unanimously.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of our time.
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield back.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Solis). The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott) that the House suspend the rules and agree to the resolution, H. Res. 1314, as amended.

The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the rules were suspended and the resolution, as amended, was agreed to.

The title of the resolution was amended so as to read: ``Remembering the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933 and extending the deepest sympathies of the House of Representatives to the victims, survivors, and families of this tragedy, and for other purposes.''.

A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

LINKS TO THE THREE PAGES IN THE U.S. CONGRESSIONAL RECORD:

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=H8633&dbname=2008_record

3. ANNIVERSARY OF AN ATROCITY
Stalin deliberately starved his own people and concealed the millions of deaths

OP-ED: By David Marples, Professor of History at the University of Alberta

The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Saturday, Nov 22, 2008
Republished in the Kyiv Post, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, November 27, 2008

This weekend marks the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian famine, known as the Holodomor (death by hunger). Many governments, including those of Canada and the United States, have recognized the famine as an act of genocide by Stalin's regime against Ukrainians. Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko has issued a bill that would make it a criminal offence to deny that the famine was genocide.

After 75 years, we know much about this tragedy, but the academic community has yet to reach a consensus on the issue. A majority of western scholars -- at least judging from published articles and books -- denies that Stalin's intention was to kill Ukrainians per se and maintains that he targeted the Soviet peasantry as a whole. Thus they deny an ethnic dimension.

For example, in his acclaimed 2007 book on life under Stalin, "The Whisperers," British historian Orlando Figes writes that the Soviet regime "was undoubtedly to blame for the famine. But its policies did not amount to a campaign of 'terror-famine,' let alone of genocide ... ." Harvard University's Terry Martin and the University of Amsterdam's Michael Ellman have expressed the same opinion.

We may never know how many died of starvation in 1932-33. Yushchenko and others speak of 10 million, or about a third of the population of Ukraine. However, more reliable estimates in Ukraine and elsewhere suggest that the death toll was three to five million, still a truly staggering figure.

It is problematic for scholars when issues become heavily politicized before definitive conclusions have been reached. The Soviet regime denied the existence of the famine for 54 years. Communists in Ukraine reject the notion that Moscow turned on Ukrainians, as do Russia and several western countries.

However, Yushchenko has made the Holodomor the central event in the history of modern Ukraine. It is a divisive one because of the association of the U.S.S.R. with modern Russia. Implicitly, it is alleged that Russia is responsible for the deaths of millions of Ukrainians. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev demurs, and the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn argued that famine occurred also in Russia as well as among ethnic Russians, Jews and Germans resident in Ukraine.

However, archival evidence suggests that the ethnic dimension of the famine was always present. Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s had been allowed to develop its own culture and institutions under a policy known as "indigenization." By the early 1930s the Soviet authorities were very concerned by the results. Led by the commissar of education and former colleague of Lenin, Mykola Skrypnyk, the republic was distancing itself from Russia.

National "deviationism" in Ukraine was linked by Stalin with the danger of new intervention from Poland, regarded as a hostile neighbour since the war of 1919-20. He wrote in a letter to his colleague Lazar Kaganovich, party leader of Ukraine in the 1920s, that he feared that "we might lose Ukraine" and that Polish leader Josef Pilsudski would exploit dissatisfaction in the republic.

Added to these volatile elements, the Soviet regime began rapidly to collectivize farms starting in 1929. Ukraine was among the first republics to be collectivized. In Kazakhstan, a third of the peasantry (about one million people) died by 1931. Stalin's goal was "to liquidate the kulaks (rich peasants) as a class." Many so designated destroyed their livestock rather than give it up to the new collective farms. The countryside became a war zone in which millions were dispossessed, with many deported to Siberia or the Far North.

After collectivization, state grain quotas were imposed on the farms. Grain was taken before the farmers could feed themselves and their families, and quotas were raised sharply in Ukraine, despite a poor harvest in 1931 in particular. Stalin, who used the grain to feed the growing urban population as well as the Red Army, appointed Extraordinary Grain Commissions in several regions. Vyacheslav Molotov led the one in Ukraine. When the grain ran out, Molotov demanded that the commissions take all food from the villages, which were stripped bare as though a plague of locusts had descended on them.

Peasants could not travel to towns or cross borders to obtain food after 1932, as they were not assigned passports like the rest of the population. In January 1933, Ukraine's border with North Caucasus was closed. Ukraine's leadership in Kharkiv, the capital at the time, was distraught. Most Ukrainian Communists blamed "kulaks" and nationalists for the starvation in villages. Stalin then sent his own plenipotentiary, Pavel Postyshev, to Kharkiv to purge the dithering leaders. Later all these figures either died during the purges or, like Skrypnyk, took their own lives.

The mass deaths of peasants were concealed from the public with the collusion of some western journalists and diplomats. Many prominent figures -- including George Bernard Shaw, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb -- reported that this ravaged land was in fact a Communist utopia. Walter Duranty of the New York Times lied systematically to Americans about the situation in the Soviet countryside.

The link between the Ukrainian famine and external events is clear. In January 1933 Hitler had come to power in Germany, adding another dire threat to Stalin's regime. Ukrainian nationalists, Poles, Hitler and Stalin's chief enemy, Leon Trotsky, all feature in Stalin's correspondence and party documents as threats to Soviet security.

Whether or not this catastrophe was premeditated -- and we may never find a "smoking gun" -- Stalin, Molotov and other Soviet leaders deliberately starved their own people and then concealed this atrocity from the outside world.

NOTE: David Marples is a professor of history at the University of Alberta.

LINK: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Anniversary+atrocity/983515/story.html

GENOCIDE OR NOT, STALIN STARVED MILLIONS TO DEATH AND

SOVIET REGIME CONCEALED FOR 54 YEARS

LINK: http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op_ed/31302

==============================================
Mr. E. Morgan Williams, Director
Government Affairs, Washington Office
SigmaBleyzer Private Equity Investment Group
President/CEO, U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC)
Publisher & Editor, Action Ukraine Report (AUR)

Founder/Trustee: "Holodomor: Through The Eyes of Ukrainian Artists"
1701 K Street, NW, Suite 903, Washington, D.C. 20006
Telephone: 202 437 4707; Fax: 202 223 1224
[email protected]; [email protected]
www.sigmableyzer.com; www.usubc.org