The Great Famine of 1932 1933 in Ukraine
Täna mälestavad ukrainlased 1932. – 33. a. suure näljahäda 76. aastapäeva. Kui soovime, et teised riigid ja rahvad mõistaksid meie ajaloo traagikat, peame ka meie seda päeva meeles pidama. Faktid tõestavad, et Ukraina näljahäda ei olnud tingitud raskest majanduslikust olukorrast, põuast või üleujutustest, vaid Stalini režiim korraldas selle teadlikult. Selle tulemusena hukkus ligi 7 miljonit süütut inimest.
Mul on hea meel, et Eesti oli esimene riik maailmas (aastal 1993), kes seda Riigikogu resolutsiooniga ametlikult genotsiidiks nimetas. 2003 aasta novembris võttis ÜRO vastu deklaratsiooni, milles nimetas 1932-33. a. Suurt Ukraina Näljahäda Ukraina rahva tragöödiaks ja mõistis hukka inimeste massilise hukkumise põhjustanud totalitaarse režiimi.
Eesti Ukrainlaste Kongress kutsel osalesin täna Ukraina Kultuurikeskuses ja kirikus toimunud mälestusürituselm kus on tehtud ka ajaveebis olev foto.
Ukraina saatkond edastas alljärgneva info kurvast sündmusest:
The Great Famine of 1932 1933 in Ukraine
Ukraine had a number of artificial famines over the 20th century. The most notable of these were the 1921 famine as a result of World War I and the Civil War in the former Russian Empire but most importantly of the collapse of agricultural policies of the Soviet communist state, and the 1946-1947 famine that came in the aftermath of World War II and was used not least for political gains by the Soviet regime.
And yet the Artificial Famine of 1932-1933, dubbed the Great Ukrainian Famine, or Holodomor, stands out not only due to the staggering numbers of its casualties but also because it did not occur spontaneously as a result of any natural or social phenomena. Rather, it was caused by genocidal practices deliberately used by the totalitarian government.
This deliberate terrorist act of the political system against civilian population exterminated not only a vast number of well-to-do, independent farmers but also whole generations of villagers. It undermined the nation’s social foundations, its traditions, spiritual and cultural identities. Considering the liquidation of city elites carried out at the same time, this meant that Ukrainians had been slated for destruction as a social entity, doomed to be thrown back into primitive conditions.
Analysis of Soviet official documents published in 1929-1933 reveals the facts of deliberate creation of unbearable conditions for rural population, two-thirds of it consisting of ethnic Ukrainians, which have led to physical extermination. The 1932-1933 Holodomor was without any doubt an action deliberately planned.
The documents reveal that there was an abundance of bread in Ukraine at the time, but bread was being confiscated and forcibly exported. Not only bread was being taken out of Ukraine: no food products were to be left, not even pickled cucumbers, cabbages or tomatoes, so that people would starve to death. Ukrainians were also prevented from leaving the regions struck by starvation in search of food; many were sought out elsewhere in the Soviet Union and forcibly returned to Ukraine.
On government orders, all forms of trade in the countryside were banned, and food supplies to villages were cut. The use of bread as wages in the areas that had failed to live up to the back-breaking norms of production was declared an offence punishable by lengthy prison terms or death. A system of fines was imposed in the form of natural products. The Ukrainian share amounted to one-third in Soviet grain supplies while some areas of Ukraine were obliged to provide more bread than the aggregate output of North Caucasus, Central Black-Soil Region, Kazakhstan, and the Moscow Region.
Historians and demographers still argue about the exact number of Holodomor victims, and figures are claimed at anywhere between 3 and 10 million. Based on data yielded by the 1937 census, population losses due to physical exhaustion, typhoid, poisonings, cannibalism, repressions, and suicides related to psychological stress and social collapse were close to 7 million persons.
The overall casualty figures would have been influenced by the order given to civil registry offices not to register deaths of children under one year of age. Scientists believe that, since it was mainly children and young people who perished in that period, average life expectancy among Ukrainians in 1932-1933 was 7,3 years among men and 10,9 years among women. Such appalling indicators have never before been reported in human history. According to some demographers, one million children failed to be born in Ukraine because of the Holodomor.
The comprehensive character of this national catastrophe deeply shakes any thinking human being. The most sophisticated statistics cannot reflect the depth of social, economic, political, moral and psychological consequences of the Holodomor, of uncontrollable government tyranny, and of the ugly phenomenon of cannibalism. The famine lasting almost two years was not a natural disaster but one imposed at will.
Due to its apparent anti-Ukrainian set as well as the scale of its spread, the 1932-1933 Holodomor became the most deadly weapon of mass destruction used by the Soviet regime in Ukraine. Without assessing this most cynical form of political terror in the historical, sociological, legal and political aspects, it is impossible today to comprehend the 20th century history of Europe, to understand the very essence of totalitarianism. Speaking about Holodomor is speaking about a major, global-scale social and humanitarian catastrophe in human history, not just the history of Ukrainianhood.
According to messages sent at the time by foreign consular offices in Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv, governments of other countries were well aware of the circumstances and scope of the famine in Ukraine. But political and business circles of foreign nations chose either to behold the tragedy in silence or to give in to Stalin’s propaganda and ignore the Holodomor altogether.
The term “genocide” would not be introduced until the UN General Assembly 11 December 1946 Resolution which defined it as a punishable offence. On 9 December 1948 the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which entered into force as of 12 January 1951.
Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such”. It goes on to read that such acts may be committed by way of, inter alia, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, which is best illustrated by the 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine.
It was in this spirit that the international community marked the 70th anniversary of the Holodomor in 2003. It started off when a special session of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine, in which only the Communist Party faction refused to participate, approved an address to the Ukrainian people on 14 May 2003. The address read that the Holodomor had been “deliberately organized by the Stalin regime” and had to be “publicly condemned by the Ukrainian society and the international community as one of the deadliest facts of genocide in world history”.
In September 2003 Ukraine called on the UN General Assembly to support Ukraine’s initiative condemning the 1932-1933 Holodomor as an act of genocide. It was for the first time in the history of the UN that the Joint Statement on the seventieth anniversary of the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine (Holodomor) named the Holodomor the national tragedy of the Ukrainian people, expressed sympathy to its victims, and called upon all “Member States, the United Nations and its special agencies, international and regional organizations, as well as non-governmental organizations, foundations and associations to pay tribute to the memory of those who perished during that tragic period of history”.
36 of the UN member states became co-authors of the Joint Statement; others supported it, including all 25 current member states of the European Union.
Recognition of the Holodomor as an act of genocide is stipulated in a number of official documents publicized by national parliaments of several countries, notably of Argentina, Australia, Canada, Estonia, Hungary, and the United States, as well as in a 16 December 2003 statement by the UNESCO Secretary General.
It is also worth noting that monuments to the victims of artificial famines and political repressions in Ukraine have been erected in a number of countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Estonia, Kazakhstan, and the Russian Federation; more monuments are now under construction in Canada, Hungary and the United States.
Ukraine calls upon all the UN member states to officially recognize the 1932-1933 Holodomor or Great Famine in Ukraine as an act of genocide.
In his address at the UN General Assembly High-Level Plenary Session on 15 September 2005, President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko said: “I am appealing to you on behalf of the nation that lost millions of people in the Holodomor, the act of genocide organized against my people. The governments of many countries then turned away from our distress. We insist that the world must know the truth about all the crimes committed against humanity. Only that way can we all be confident that indifference will never again encourage perpetrators”.
