hen Stalin implemented the collectivization of farmers in the 1930s, the results in many parts of the Soviet Union were catastrophic. And, according to many accounts, nowhere did the situation become as dire as it did in Ukraine.
Agricultural production by fiercely independent farmers was halved from one year to the next, and starvation stalked the land. Moscow was not sympathetic. The demands for payment in the form of crops were not eased, but escalated.
The farmers who owned substantial amounts of land were called kulaks, and they had been stigmatized by Lenin as “bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers…” The communist activists treated them as if they were criminals, arguing that to take food for yourself when the state owned all food was de facto theft.
The Ukrainians call the terrible famine that ravished their country in 1932 and 1933 the Holodomor, which literally means death by hunger. Although it clearly was no accident but rather the consequence of policies dictated by Moscow before independence there was little to nothing that could be said about it.
Even today it is a sensitive subject. Former president Viktor Yushchenko made a point of describing the deaths as genocide and not just an accident. Despite criticism for the expense, he had a monument built to those who died in the Holodomor high on the banks of the Dnieper River in Kyiv. It was inaugurated last year.
As with all such massive horrors, no one is sure how many died in the Holodomor. A likely number is six to seven million, although estimates range from as low as 2.6 million to as high as 10 million. On the fourth Saturday of every November, services are held to commemorate those who suffered and died in the Holodomor.
The memorial in Kyiv includes books listing those killed and writings about the famine, as well as slide presentations of the history. Candles are lit for the victims, especially on memorial occasions.
In a gesture to appease Russian unease with the fingers pointed at them for the Holodomor (although it is the Soviets and not the Russians per se who are blamed), the current president, Viktor Yanukovych, made the point earlier this year that the famine of 1932-33 was not limited to Ukraine, but experienced widely throughout the Soviet Union as a result of collectivization. But data indicate Ukraine suffered the most, by far.
In November this year, visiting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev joined President Yanukovych at the Holodomor memorial in Kyiv, to honor the victims.
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