Genoicide Case Study #1: Ukranian Holdomor
Article Source: http://www.holodomorct.org/.html
1928
Stalin introduces a program of agricultural collectivization that forces peasants/farmers to give up their private land and livestock, and join state owned, factory-like collective farms. Stalin decides that collective farms would not only feed the industrial workers in the cities but would also provide a substantial amount of grain to be sold abroad, with the money used to finance his industrialization plans.
1929
A policy of enforcement is applied, using regular troops and secret police. Many Ukrainian peasants/farmers, known for their independence, still refuse to join the collective farms. Stalin decides to “liquidate them as a class” and accuses Ukrainians of “bourgeois nationalism.”[connection to their own people and culture.]
1930
Hundreds of thousands are expropriated, dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped to Siberia where they are left, often without food or shelter. In the end, 1,000,000 Ukrainian peasants are seized and more than 850,000 deported to the frozen tundras of Siberia, where many perished.
1932-1933
The Soviet government increases Ukraine's [grain] production quotas by 44%, ensuring that they could not be met. Starvation becomes widespread. Secret decrees are implemented thatallow arrest or execution of any starving peasantfound taking as little as a few stalks of wheat or a potato from the fields he worked. By decree, discriminatory voucher systems are implemented, and military blockades are erected around Ukrainian villages preventing the transport of food into the villages and the hungry from leaving in search of food. Brigades of young activists from other Soviet regions are brought in to confiscate hidden grain, and eventually all foodstuffs from the peasants’ homes.
Stalin states of Ukraine that “the national question is in essence a rural question” and he and his henchmen determine to “teach a lesson through famine” and ultimately,to deal a “crushing blow” to the backbone [nationalism] of Ukraine, its rural population.
1933
Ukrainians are dying at the rate of 25,000 a day, more than half were children. In the end, up to 10 million starve to death. Stalin denies to the world that there is any famine in Ukraine, and prevents international aid from entering the country.
Modern Times
It was kept out of official history until 1991, when the country of 47 million finally won its independence.
Today it is recognized as genocide by less than two dozen countries out of 196. The famine is now the focus of books, exhibitions and documentaries marking the 75th anniversary of the tragedy.
Ukraine’s government is asking the United Nations to recognize the disaster as an act of genocide, worsening already frosty relations with Russia, which says the famine resulted from drought. Russian nationalists vandalized an exhibit at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow in November. While the Russian government didn’t condone the attack, it called Ukraine’s depiction of the famine a “one-sided falsification of history.’’
In recent years Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko had ordered the release of old KGB records on the Famine.
With this information it has become very apparent that this Famine was a deliberate act of Genocide, a method to ethnically cleanse Ukrainians from the territories of Ukraine and parts of Russia. At first only several thousand documents were released. Recently another batch of 25,000 documents is being declassified.
As more documents are released this event in Ukrainian history has taken on a very ominous tone.
On November 28th 2006, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament of Ukraine) had passed a decree defining the Holodomor as a deliberate Act of Genocide.
Eyewitness Accounts
http://www.ukrainegenocide.org/my-recollections_by-pani-kira.pdf
http://www.holodomorct.org/accounts.html
Resources
Map of the 1932-1933 Famine: http://www.ukrainegenocide.org/images/geography.jpg
Ukranian World Congress: http://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/Holodomor/Resolutions/Holodomor_english_version_2MB.pdf
Questions
Who? Describe the victims. Describe the perpetrators.
What? What main factors led to the abuses?
What ultranationalist policies were used- officially or unofficially?
What was the ultranationalist group trying to achieve by commiting genocide?
Where? Where did the event occur?
When? When did the event take place and when did the world react to the event?
Why? Why did one group resort to policies of genocide?
Why was it named ‘Holodomor’?
How? How did the genocide continue without other nations preventing it or stopping it?