By the name Holodomor we designate the genocide by starvation of over 6 million people, perpetrated by the Soviet regime against the Ukrainian population, in the years 1932-33. The Ukrainians were subject to this terrible punishment because they were accused of disputing the collective property system. All agricultural resources were seized and the population was starved. A quarter of the rural population, including men, women and children, were thus exterminated by famine. The corpses were lying in the street without their relatives, who were near death as well, having the strength to bury them. The famine caused, along with the annihilation of the farmers, the extermination of the cultural, religious and intellectual élites of the Ukraine, all categories considered as “people’s enemies”.
Where and when
The “Great Famine” (Holodomor in Ukrainian means “inflicting death by starvation"), intentionally planned by the Soviet regime, hit the Ukraine in the years 1932-33. According to the researchers’ data, the regions which were hit the hardest by the starvation were: the current region of Poltava, the region of Sumy, the region of Kharkiv, the region of Cherkasy, the region of Kyiv, the region of Zhytomyr, with 52,8% of the victims. Actually, Holodomor extended to the whole Central, Southern, Eastern and Northern Ukraine.
Planners and perpetrators
According to historians, undoubtedly Holodomor was a genocide act, an outcome of the political decisions of Stalin’s totalitarian regime to crush the Ukrainian people. Lately, the Ukraine has made known numerous documents taken from the archives of the KGB; revealing the goals and operational mechanisms of the policy that led to the murder of millions Ukrainians. Research has been carried out in several different world countries and archival documents have been published in Great Britain, Italy, France and so on. They testify that, in the case of Ukraine and the nearby regions, famine was caused deliberately.
The death by famine in Ukraine was a tragic episode within the frame work of the forced collectivization of the countryside. On 6 May 1933, Stalin answered writer Mihail Solohov’s demand to send food aid to the exhausted population with the following words: “ ...the respected farmers of his district, and not only his, have led protests and sabotages, and were ready to leave workers and the Red Army without bread! The fact that one commits a silent sabotage yet appears loyal and peaceful (without bloodshed) is a fact that does not change anything about the affair, those respected farmers have searched for a way to depose Soviet power. Causing themselves war with a vengeance, dear comrade Solohov!” (The Black Book of Communism).
Planning and pattern of execution
Of course, the responsibilities for the events must be attributed to the whole of the Stalinist regime with its branched punitive system. The Measures taken included the introduction of enormous shares of harvested grain designated to stockpiles (requisition of the State); the seizure of all foodstuffs; rationing the sale of foodstuffs; the deployment of internal troops, and the restriction of the starving people to move in other region of the USSR in search of food.
Because of the fulfilment of these repressive measures, the Ukrainian population was made prisoner in enormous ghettos, in which it was impossible to survive. By August 7th, 1932 in the USSR the property collective was dictated “sacred and secure” in a way on which whoever-including children-committed a theft or offense to “socialist property” (such as harvesting and hiding wheat for one’s children who were dying of hunger), or “wasted,” would be accused and serve a sentence between ten years in labour camps and the death penalty. The shares designated for the stockpiles (for the city and exports) had absolute prices that could not be reduced for any reason; those constraints on Ukraine were unbearable (in July 1932 45% of harvested grain was demanded and gathered up, in November a second requisition was announced and in January 1933 a third). December 6, 1932, in a bulletin from the Political Office on local authority, Ukrainian villages were accused of not supplying their fixed shares and were subjected to the following sanctions: banned from all provisions (of goods and of food), forced requisitions, banned from all trade, confiscation of every financial resource; all of their available grain was ransacked, including grain for sowing.
On December 27, 1932 the obligatory “passport” was imposed, the passport designated internal movements in order to stop desperate escapes to the zones not struck by the famine. On January 22, 1933 another bulletin, signed by Stalin at Molotov, prevented every method of transportation (by the suspension of selling train tickets and blocking streets) to the Ukrainian peasants and of the Northern Caucasus to escape from districts where there was not anything left to eat. The bulletin of the Politburo on December 27, 1932 explained that the objective of the internal passport was “to liquidate the parasite of socialism and to combat the infiltration of Kulak’s in cities”, while the bulletin of January 22, 1933 signed by Stalin in Molotov, referred to “the stop of counter-revolutions” and explained that “The Central Committee and government had the task of stopping the migration of peasants in mass [to the cities in order to escape the famine] organized by the enemies of the Soviet government, by counter-revolutionaries and Polish agents, the purpose of propaganda against the kolkhosian system in particular and the soviet government in general” (The Black Book of Communism).
Despite this, in 1933 the Soviet government exported 18 million quintals grain and other products, while it kept on officially denying the famine. Only on 15 March 1933, the seizures of grain were suspended. In April, grain from the army depots was distributed in the villages. The exhausted farmers would need help for the operations necessary to produce the harvest that would eventually put an end to the nightmare.