Ukrainian Holodomor Genocide/Famine of the 30's

[Ukraineboy]

I notice there hasn't been a large or if any topic about this...

In 32/33 Stalin set a large quota for wheat, he also started to close off road into various parts of Ukraine, he ordered soldiers to rip out crops, and to even go as far as to shooting birds and rabbits.

Stalin did not like Ukrainians for their refusal to go into collective farms, defined as Kulaks, he wanted to mass murder them for their spirit and nationalism.

here are some links:

http://www.ucca.org/famine/


The number of deaths vary from 7 Million to 10 million and sometimes less.

The WORST thing about this, is the denial.

Alot of people talk about Holocaust denial, but it is nothing compared to this! For 50 years, historians and news reporters* denied the whole Genocide! Even today people deny it!

* During the induced famine, a New York Time reporter went to Ukraine and reported this as a famine and praised the USSR for their help with it, even though he saw it was an induced famine, he was pro-soviet. Later on he got a Pulitzer or some esteemed award. Today many Ukrainian groups wish that it be removed.

I'm sorry I can't provide alot of sources...

[Dan]

This is a good post. Please give a little thought to providing sources.

[Deterance]

There are threads on the ukrainian holocaust here at the forum as well, I just dont know how to post internal links.

The subject definetly needs more research. I have tried finding out more information about it, but internet resources are relatively scarce.

Ukranian Boy,

Do you know if any effort has been made to complie survivor testimony while there are still survivors living? If there has not been an effort, one needs to be started quickly while there are still living memory sources of the actual events.

[Ukraineboy]

I believe various Ukrainian groups are getting survivor accounts. I have read a couple, like one very disturbing one...

See, she was a child during it, and one day her dads brother came and begged for food, her Dad said "If we give you food now, we will be in the same position tomorrow" Sure enough, his brother died the next day.

Another story is.. kind of Monty Pythonish, even though its dead serious..

they wheeled dead bodies off the street, they loaded on guy and he said "I'm not dead yet" then the loader guy said "We're not going to make two trips".

Very very sad...

I will try and find more sources, I am just a little busy. This is truly a forgotten holocaust. If the numbers are correct, then it is even larger than the Jewish Holocaust! This is why I hate Stalin and always will...

[Kunikov]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

The Years of Hunger : Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933
by R. W. Davies (Author), Stephen G. Wheatcroft (Author)

Invest in this book, very pricey, but worth it in terms of telling more or less exactly what happened.

[michael mills]

Wheatcroft is an academic here in Australia, and is well-known for his pro-Soviet apologist attitude.

His works all aim at minimising the inhumanity of the Soviet Government, particularly during the Stalinist period. That being said, they should not be dismissed out of hand, and contain a lot of background information.

I would think that the truth about the Ukrainian famine lies somewhere between the minimalist position of Wheatcroft and similar apologist historians and the maximalist position taken by Ukrainain nationalists and former Cold-War hacks like Conquest.

[nny]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

The Years of Hunger : Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933
by R. W. Davies (Author), Stephen G. Wheatcroft (Author)

Invest in this book, very pricey, but worth it in terms of telling more or less exactly what happened.

I agree with Mills, think of Wheatcroft as David Irving for the USSR. In a review for "Russia Under the Bolsheviks" by Richard Pipes a reader comments :

The Russians knew they couldn't control what was written about them unless they controlled WHO did the writing. They did this by refusing the major press agencies access to Russia until Moscow had approved the journalist. The Sunday Times famously stood up to this bullying for decades. Not the New York Times. They sent a pre-approved journalist by the name of Walter Duranty. Ironically, Duranty was an out spoken anti-Communist. But he quickly realised that if he wrote what the Russians wanted, he would have access to inside information - with that would come influence and fame. Better yet for Duranty, he very early on identified Stalin as Lenin's likely successor (at a time which this was not at ALL obvious). He began to eulogise Stalin. He praised collectivisation, denied the Ukrainian famine - and resorted to lie upon lie upon lie. Such was the credulity of the western public and press that he was rewarded for his infamy with the Pulitzer Prize.

It should be obvious to most people why there were reporters who denied the famine, the soviets wouldn't have allowed access to any western reporters who would portray bolshevism in a poor light. Its a shame the famine in the Ukraine occupies so little cultural memory in most western countries.

[Kunikov]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

The Years of Hunger : Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933
by R. W. Davies (Author), Stephen G. Wheatcroft (Author)

Invest in this book, very pricey, but worth it in terms of telling more or less exactly what happened.

I agree with Mills, think of Wheatcroft as David Irving for the USSR. In a review for "Russia Under the Bolsheviks" by Richard Pipes a reader comments :

The Russians knew they couldn't control what was written about them unless they controlled WHO did the writing. They did this by refusing the major press agencies access to Russia until Moscow had approved the journalist. The Sunday Times famously stood up to this bullying for decades. Not the New York Times. They sent a pre-approved journalist by the name of Walter Duranty. Ironically, Duranty was an out spoken anti-Communist. But he quickly realised that if he wrote what the Russians wanted, he would have access to inside information - with that would come influence and fame. Better yet for Duranty, he very early on identified Stalin as Lenin's likely successor (at a time which this was not at ALL obvious). He began to eulogise Stalin. He praised collectivisation, denied the Ukrainian famine - and resorted to lie upon lie upon lie. Such was the credulity of the western public and press that he was rewarded for his infamy with the Pulitzer Prize.

It should be obvious to most people why there were reporters who denied the famine, the soviets wouldn't have allowed access to any western reporters who would portray bolshevism in a poor light. Its a shame the famine in the Ukraine occupies so little cultural memory in most western countries.

No one denies the famine, what is debated is why it happened and what was the cost in terms of human lives lost.

[AAA]

Deja Vu- a strange feeling we've been here before :

I still really like the Ukrainian site, http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/ Primarily art about the famine, but also has things like reprints of period western news (including the infamous Duranty famine denial articles just mentioned, but also independent reports), as well as some works by western academics etc.

Famine-Genocide in Ukraine 1932-1933 http://www.faminegenocide.com/resources/resources.html argues for the case that it was deliberate genocide, and has a multitude of links and resources (including various survivors accounts etc).

A germane link from this forum : Hitlerite and Stalinist terrors compared (Where learned gentlemen M.Mills and S.Romanov discuss the works and nature of S.G.Wheatcroft), oh and Ukrainian genocide with many links (and familar actors in familiar roles).

[Serus]

(...)

No one denies the famine, what is debated is why it happened and what was the cost in terms of human lives lost.

I agree but nny complained that this is not very well known in the Western countries, he said:

Its a shame the famine in the Ukraine occupies so little cultural memory in most western countries.

Nothing about denial in this statement.

[David Thompson]

See also: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 21#1005021

[Jacob Peters]

The following demographic data from the Soviet archives discredit much of the senationalist literature alleging "up to 10 million starved in Ukraine". They are presented and discussed in "Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-33" by Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies. In the USSR, deaths were as follows:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econo ... deaths.xls
1930: 2,989,721
1931: 2,932,563
1932: 3,105,159
1933: 5,247,885


Altogether, this data shows that there were 2,252,962 excess deaths in 1932-33. Although Wheatcroft and Davies estimate 1.5 million excess deaths in Kazakhstan, this is rather implausible. In 1926, the population of the region which became Kazakhstan was six million (Kazakh SSR formed in 1936). This was approximately equal to the Lower Volga region. With a roughly equal population, how could Kazakhstan have possibly endured nine times as many deaths as the hard hit Lower Volga area? The 1937 census shows the Kazakh SSR population at 5.1 million down from 6 million in 1926. The Lower Volga region had a population of 4.8 million in 1937 down from 5.3 million in 1926.

The allegation by Cold Warrior writers like Robert Conquest and James Mace calling the famine was deliberately imposed by the Soviet government is simply untrue. Neither of these writers have the necessary credentials to examine the economic and demographic aspects of the USSR. Economic scholars R.W Davies, Stephen Wheatcroft, and Mark Tauger who've actually done research on Soviet agriculture show that the famine was genuinely caused by a series of poor harvests resulting from bad weather, drought, rust, and other factors. The claim that "all grain was seized" is simply not true because throughout the 1930-33 period collections of grain remained consistent. Indeed, the 1932 level collected was 4 million tons lower than the previous year.

Refer to these papers by Dr Tauger: http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/soviet.htm