This article was originally published in November 2017. It is re-published today to mark Holodomor Remembrance Day, which in Ukraine falls on the 4th Saturday of November. This year we also marks the 91st anniversary of Stalin’s genocide which claimed the lives of up to 7 million innocent people.
In the aftermath of the First World War, and the Bolshevik Revolution, and following a period of drought, Russia in 1921 found itself faced with crippling food shortages.
On the orders of Lenin, in the previous year, much needed grain was being forcibly requisitioned by the state, leaving the countryside peasantry on whom the agricultural sector depended, unable to feed even themselves.
In the context of a country ravaged by war, depleted of manpower, and without sufficient grain necessary to sow for the next year’s harvest, agricultural production was to plummet to dangerous lows.
The most productive regions traditionally produced some 20 million tonnes of grain per annum. In 1920 production had fallen to 8.45 million, tonnes, and following the drought, in 1921 it was down to just 2.9 million tonnes. In some parts of Russia and also in Ukraine production was down to as low as 5% of the traditional norm.
The scene was set for a humanitarian disaster of phenomenal proportions: starvation led to scenes of horror, with reports of cannabilism rife. A refugee crisis ensued.
On June 21st 1921 Pravda declared that 25 million people were starving in the Soviet Union.
Eventually, and against Lenin’s instinct, international assistance was to come via the efforts of Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration (ARA). By 1922 the ARA was feeding 11 million people each day and distributing much needed medical aid, thus saving millions of lives.
However, by the end of that year, 5 million had perished.
Whilst it might be assumed that Lenin would have learned from the failures of forced collectivisation and unrealistic economic and political policies, it was to be his successor, Josef Stalin, who truly learned the lessons of famine – and just a decade later he was to apply those lessons in the most brutal and callous way possible.
Collectivisation was being forced on the peasantry, and in emulation of Lenin’s failed policy that caused so much disaster a decade earlier, in 1932 quotas were introduced demanding that food be handed over.
Then, in an act of almost unprecedented evil, he set out to destroy the peasantry, who had always resisted collectivisation, by applying the lessons of 1921-22.
Communities failing to meet the totally unrealistic quotas imposed upon them were punished by having them raised still further. Party officials and armed soldiers ransacked homes, taking away every scrap of food they could find: soon the mere possession of food would be punishable by imprisonment or arbitrary execution.
Refugees attempting to flee the affected countryside in search of food were turned back or shot. Starvation and cannibalism returned, with 2,500 people being prosecuted for the offence.
Whilst exact numbers can never be known – the mortality rate was so high that many local councils simply stopped recording deaths – as many as seven and a half million may have perished in a period of just ten months.
Only in 1983 did the Soviet government acknowledge that a famine had occurred, commencing a disinformation campaign placing the blame on drought. In the same year, the Soviet Embassy issued an official protest over the unveiling of a monument in memory of the victims of the Holodomor in Edmonton.
However, former President of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, admitting to his own role in the official cover-up, came out in support of recognising the famine as a deliberate act of genocide.
But this is not enough. The UK has, despite numerous campaigns, as well as lobbying by the Ukrainian community in Great Britain, still to recognise Holodomor as an act of Genocide.
The current Russian government, itself accused of human rights abuses, including recently in occupied Crimea where the indigenous Tatar population has faced persecution reminiscent of Stain’s deportations in 1944, appears to be falling back to its 1983 position.
Whilst rehabilitation of Stalin is central to Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian state and his vision of Russia’s resurgence as a great power, like Stalin, the Russian President also views Ukraine as a threat.
The warning signs are there for all to see.
www.memorialholodomors.org.ua
