The Holodomor is a deliberately and purposefully created famine. The Ukrainian word Holodomor is formed from two roots — holod (hunger) and mor (plague/death) — and literally means “death by hunger.” Ukraine experienced three famines — in 1921–1923, 1932–1933, and 1946–1947.
The largest was the Holodomor of 1932–1933. It claimed the lives of millions of people, mostly rural residents, who had always been the foundation of the Ukrainian nation and culture. At least 4.5 million people became victims of the Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine.
The Holodomor was the result of deliberate policy, not natural circumstances. In 1932, the Soviet authorities demanded unrealistically high grain procurement quotas from Ukrainian peasants. For failure to fulfil the plan (which, again, was impossible to meet), absolutely all food was confiscated — not only grain and flour, but also vegetables, any winter supplies, and even seed stock.
People’s livestock had been taken even earlier, during collectivization in 1929, as were their private land plots, which were transferred to collective farms. For any attempts to hide food or find a few leftover ears of grain in the fields after the harvest had already been collected, peasants were brutally punished: in 1932 the “Law of Five Ears of Grain” was adopted, which prescribed execution or many years in labor camps for the “offender” and confiscation of all their property.
Villages were surrounded by Soviet troops, who killed anyone attempting to leave the famine-stricken areas, so rural residents could not go elsewhere where food might have been available. At the same time, large quantities of grain were stored in state reserves, and the USSR was actively exporting Ukrainian grain. The goal of the totalitarian communist regime was the destruction of Ukrainian society. Ukrainians managed their land skillfully and opposed collectivization and Moscow’s interference in local life. They preserved their spiritual values, folk traditions, language, and culture and did not want to replace them with Moscow or Soviet ones. Therefore, the Stalinist regime regarded the Ukrainian peasantry as potentially dangerous.
The totalitarian authorities held the same view of Ukrainian civic, religious, and cultural figures. Thus, the genocide also manifested itself in the physical destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. The Soviet system particularly hated Ukrainian writers, and starting in 1933, over the following years many of them were killed, others were imprisoned in camps, where most were executed. These artists are known as representatives of the “Executed Renaissance.”
What makes the Holodomor a genocide? According to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), genocide is actions committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Raphael Lemkin, the author of the Convention and the term “genocide,” called the destruction of the Ukrainian nation a “classic example of genocide.” Integral components of the genocide against Ukrainians were the mass starvation of the rural population, the destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, and the liquidation of the Ukrainian Church.
Moscow concealed the famine and forbade any discussion of it. However, the act of genocide against the Ukrainian people is proven by thousands of discovered and declassified documents from state authorities and the Communist Party, including those signed by Stalin, which confirm the organization of an artificial famine, as well as eyewitness testimonies, photographic evidence, archival materials, and mass burial sites of Holodomor victims.
The Holodomor of 1932–1933 has been recognized as genocide against the Ukrainian people by 34 countries, as well as by the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. However, many countries, including Russia, do not recognize the Holodomor as a crime of genocide.
Every year, on the fourth Saturday of November, Ukrainians commemorate the victims of the famines. At 4:00 p.m., they light candles and memorial lamps and place them on their windowsills as a sign of remembrance for those who died from the terrible hunger. The Holodomor, like any genocide, is not only a tragedy of the past. It is a warning of what systematic violence against an entire nation can lead to.
Written by
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Iryna Prozhohina
Philologist, Associate Professor, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Researches Ukrainian language and culture, and teaches Ukrainian to foreigners.
Translated by
Mike Svystun
Software developer, entrepreneur.