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Paper on the Topic:
The Holodomor of 1932-1933 and reaction to it in the West
Andriy Rybak
Student in the Humanities Faculty (History)
National University of the Ostroh Academy
Ostroh, Ukraine - 2004
Introduction
1. The Famine in Ukraine and its portrayal in the Western press
2. Reaction among Western governments to events in Ukraine in 1932-1933
3. Foreign historical writing on the Holodomor
4. The International Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933
Conclusions
Bibliography
Introduction
The 20th century was one of the most dramatic in the history of Ukraine. The fate of our people included no small number of terrible trials. Among
these, the most horrible was undoubtedly the Famine of 1932-33, which took the lives of 8 million people during peacetime. This was a true
catastrophe for Ukrainians whose catastrophic consequences we are feeling to this day.
The historic Ukrainian countryside, with its customs and traditions, was destroyed, to be replaced by kolhosp country. Famine and persecution
seeded social fear, political apathy among citizens, and passivity. The newly-introduced kolhosp system deadened any sense of individuality,
which had been the foundation of the identity of the Ukrainian peasant. The Holodomor broke the chain of generations in the development of the
Ukrainian elite and put an end to the ukrainianization of the country’s urban areas. Instead, the cities became even more open to Russians. The
depopulated villages were settled by immigrants from Russia and the Northern Caucasus. The results of the “russianization” of Eastern Ukraine
are evident to this day.
The issue of reviving the historical truth about the genocide against Ukrainians and judging those responsible for this tragedy remains
exceptionally significant to this day. Unfortunately, the civilized world has not reached this point yet. Our requests that the UN recognize the
famine of 1932-33 as an act of genocide against our people have gone unheard. Our requests that it be acknowledged as one of the greatest
human tragedies of the 20th century have gone largely unnoticed in world historical writings and journalism. But Ukrainian émigré communities
deserve credit, both for their tireless efforts to draw the attention of western communities and in their research into the “Ukrainian Golgotha.”
With the announcement of Ukraine’s independence, writers like V. I. Morochko, M. Mukhina, Y. Kyrychuk, Y. Hrytsak and others have undertaken
to study the Holodomor. They have been able to use previously inaccessible archives that describe the events of 1932-33 objectively.
In this work, we will attempt to determine to what extent the West was informed about events in Ukraine, what the reaction of the governments of
major European countries was, and what the current historical viewpoint on the murder by famine [Holodomor] against Ukrainians in 1932-33 is.
The goal of this paper is to study the resonance of the Holodomor in Ukraine in Western countries.
With this goal in mind, we set ourselves these objectives:
• to determine the awareness level of European society regarding events in Ukraine;
• to research the international situation and the reaction of European governments;
• to trace the position taken in foreign studies regarding the issue of the famine in Ukraine;
• to study the results of the work of the International Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine.
Based on these objectives, this paper has been organized into four sections.
1. The Famine in Ukraine and its portrayal in the Western press
By the end of the 1920s, Josef Stalin was consolidating his position within the Communist Party, which made it possible for him to concentrate
on carrying out his policies. From 1928 on, there was a clear return to the methods of “war communism.” The epitome of this new direction was
the introduction in May 1929 of the first Five-Year Plan, with its aim of “building a socialist order.” “The beginning of building socialism” has been
characterized by mass persecutions and executions, and the idea of an “all-out class war” picked up pace. According to communists, the “class
war had a specific national aspect” in Ukraine. In July 1929, massive arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia began and the so-called “Union for
the Liberation of Ukraine” affair was fabricated. This is when such activists as S. Yevremov, V. Slabchenko, Y. Germaise, and others were
persecuted. Over 1930-34, 24 of the 34 bishops of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church were arrested, and another 8 disappeared
without trace.
In February 1931, another wave of arrests began, the so-called “Ukrainian National Center” affair. This time, most of those arrested and shipped
off were mostly activists who had returned to Ukraine in the 1920s. Among them was Mykhailo Hrushevskiy, a famous historian and the first
president of independent Ukraine in 1918. One year later, the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party (b) accused the Communist
Party (b) of Ukraine of tolerating “Ukrainian nationalistic tendencies.” In the period between June 1932 and May 1933, as a result of repression,
the Ukrainian Communist Party shrank from 520,000 to 285,000 members.
Meanwhile, in November 1929, total collectivization was declared the soviet goal. That year, prices for grain began to fall all over Europe. That is,
in order to make a considerable profit from the sale of grain abroad, the USSR needed to increase its deliveries. War was declared against
peasants. From Summer 1932 on, all foodstuffs began to be confiscated among rural dwellers, accompanied by “de-kurkulization,” the term
“kurkul” or wealthy farmer being applied to those who had managed to cover their roofs with tin. On August 7, 1932, a resolution was issued “On
the protection of the property of state enterprises, farms and cooperatives and on strengthening community ownership.” Now it was considered
stealing to take even a handful of grain and such people were subject to severe punishment. The resolution was nicknamed the “law of five
ears,” meaning five ears of grain.
On December 14, 1932, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) passed another resolution, “On grain production in
Ukraine.” It was essentially aimed at completely removing all stores of food on territory inhabited by Ukrainians [7, p. 23] That same month, the
system of internal passports was introduced, which attached villagers to their villages. In order to confiscate produce from peasants, the army
and the police were used, as well as “towing brigades.” Moreover, the famine was restricted to Ukrainian territories. Squadrons patrolled the
borders and did not allow people to cross into Russia, Poland or Rumania. [16, p. 179]
Meanwhile, storehouses and railway stations were overflowing with grain and potatoes. They were rotting under the open sky, but anybody who
tried to get to these life-sustaining products was shot on the spot. This is all clear evidence of the deliberate and targeted nature of this effort to
destroy millions of Ukrainians. To the now-free land and the empty villages, people from central Russia and the northern Caucasus were moved
in.
In general, there were three categories of foreigners living in the USSR in 1932-33 who had fairly accurate information about the catastrophic
famine. In the first place, there were the diplomats, then the engineers and other professionals who were working for the USSR during its
industrialization phase, and finally, there were the journalists and writers.
There is no doubt that the best-informed about the tragic situation in Ukraine were the embassies and consulates of foreign countries in
Moscow and their trade representatives. But diplomatic notices and reports about the famine remained in the secret archives of the various
Foreign Ministries and did not get disseminated to the broader public. Obviously, the best information was in the hands of the Italians, who had a
consulate in the capital of the Ukrainian SSR. These documents, with their hand-written comments in the famed blue pencil of Benito Mussolini,
were found by representatives of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Rome.
Possibly the most interesting testimony was dated May 31, 1933: “Famine and the Ukrainian question.” According to Cardinal Gredingo, there
was little doubt that the famine was artificially instigated in order to “change the ethnic composition of Ukraine” and to “solve the Ukrainian
question once and for all.” “Ukrainian lands depopulated,” wrote S. Gredingo in his report on a trip by plane from Kharkiv to Odesa and back. He
provided a considerable amount of important detail about the terror unleashed upon Ukrainian peasantry and about their negative attitude
towards those in power. In his notes, he also drew attention to the pragmatic, inhuman nature of Stalin’s policies. [13, p. 115]
Another invaluable source of information was the testimony of domestic experts and businesspeople who traveled around the USSR as
representatives of industrial and trading companies, so-called “returnees” who had been prisoners of war during WWI, German settlers who
had legally moved to Ukraine from the USSR, and Ukrainian villagers who were lucky enough to get across the Zbruch or the Dnister. Their
testimony made it to the pages of the world press.
Among the foreigners who knew about the real state of affairs in Ukraine were engineers and workers who came to the USSR during the first
Five-Year Plan period. During the Great Famine, there were as many as 5,000 of them, mostly Germans. Since they were living among the
locals, they obviously knew the truth. Still, being in a working relationship with the Soviet Government and earning high salaries, they kept quiet.
Only in their letters to their families and during their home leaves did they occasionally and very cautiously mention what they had seen. [8, p. 241]
The third category of foreigners who were undoubtedly informed about the famine was western European and American writers who were in the
Soviet Union during this period.
The story of the famine in Ukraine first found its way to the pages of an English-language paper in March 1933, when Garrett Jones, a reporter for
the Manchester Guardian, and, in his footsteps, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote about what they had seen there. They both happened to be traveling
in Ukraine at the same time. Moscow immediately closed off this territory to journalists. In response, two American correspondents, Walter
Duranty from the New York Times and Louis Fisher of “The Nation,” became the first to completely deny that there was a famine in Ukraine. [11,
p. 292] Years later, the US Congressional Commission on the Famine in Ukraine came to conclusion that a slew of American journalists,
including Duranty, had been collaborating with soviet circles in keeping quiet about the famine.
By contrast, Le Figaro, a French paper, the Neuer Züricher Zeitung and the Gazette Lausanne all published articles about the famine taking place
in the Ukrainian countryside. Altogether, more than 60 articles on the famine were printed in the English, French and German press. [12, p. 128]
But censorship of press filings by foreign correspondents was intensified. According to French journalist Pierre Berlian, only such euphemisms
as “difficulties with food products” were able to get through.
At the beginning of 1933, an order came out that forbade foreign journalists to leave Moscow. They could now only travel with the specific
permission of the NKVD and only along a specific route that had been previously approved. In the meantime, all of Ukraine was declared off-
limits to correspondents. This isolation of Ukraine continued to September 1933. At this time there was considerable bribery and paying off of the
foreign press. The Communist Party of Ukraine was very generous in its “subsidies” of many employees of foreign papers. [6, p. 43]
Despite the fact that journalists knew well what was really going on in Ukraine, many of them, freely or otherwise, were drawn into the great
“conspiracy of silence.” The efforts of the Soviet government to hide the catastrophic famine at all costs undoubtedly played a role as well. No
soviet paper was allowed to even hint that there might be a famine. It was impossible to talk about it in public, either, and even the word “famine”
became taboo. It was dangerous to use it. Doctors were forbidden to give famine as a cause of sickness or death. The Soviet Government
stopped publishing population statistics. If it had numbers about the death toll of the famine, it was keeping them under lock and key.
Still, the scale of the catastrophe was so enormous that even the rigid laws of the Bolshevik police system found it impossible to hide it from the
world. The Austrian press, for one, was very much on the side of Ukraine. On December 16–18, 1933, there was even a conference on the
Holodomor in Vienna. Because of this event, the International Committee to Help the Hungry in the USSR was formed, under the leadership of
Cardinal Teodor Innitzer. [12, p. 128] But the Soviet Government categorically denied that there was any kind of famine in Ukraine. It branded any
reports about famine as slander and anti-soviet propaganda and labeled those who disseminated it “fascist agents.”
The bolsheviks decided to counter the testimony of credible eye-witnesses with the testimony of its own “witnesses.” As soon as early spring
1933, a group of English writers led by G. B. Shaw traveled to the USSR. The visit was so masterfully organized that on their return to London,
they printed a statement in the Manchester Guardian that declared that all reports of famine a fantasy and a lie.
Shaw was not the only westerner infatuated with the USSR. The mania of sovietophilism was widespread among the intellectual elite of the
West. R. Rolland, who then lived in Switzerland, would wave his arms as though chasing flies whenever someone told him about the famine in
Ukraine. “I don’t want to hear about this. My obligation is to fight the closer and greater evil. I’m fighting Hitlerism,” he would repeat with the
intensity of a madman. The position of Shaw and Rolland was shared by other famous western European writers such as Barbuse, Huxley, and
the Webbs. [8, pp 348-349]
Well-known French politician, Eduard Herriot, who was in the Soviet Union at the end of August in 1933 also played a role as a Bolshevik
propaganda tool. In his articles and public speeches, he regularly stated that any reports about famine and destitution in Ukraine were “an
absurd myth.” [2, p. 89]
As we can see, both objective information about events in Ukraine and complete denial of those events circulated abroad. Yet there is no doubt
that government circles across Europe knew very well what was going on.
2. Reaction among Western governments to events in Ukraine in 1932-1933
This issue, in our opinion, raises the question about the joint responsibility of the civilized world for the crime that of starving several million
Ukrainians to death. Could the major countries have influenced the Soviet Government and prevented this catastrophe? Or could they at least
have reduced its scale, saving some of the victims from death? Why didn’t the world rush to help Ukraine? The key to all these questions lies in
the international situation in the 1930s.
In January 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Democratic western countries, who had no idea, then, of the deadly danger Red
Moscow represented to them, considered it the lesser of two evils, compared to the threat of Nazi Germany. This situation was completely taken
advantage of by Soviet diplomats. For the USSR was also frightened by the changes in Germany and was looking for new guarantees of its own
security. Thus, based on their mutual antagonism to Hitler’s Germany, the bolsheviks and western democracies found common ground.
Unexpectedly, the bolsheviks began to defend the Treaty of Versailles, which they had not long before classified as “most shameless and
predator” and whose authors they had called “a band of pirates.”
The Soviet position on the League of Nations, which Soviet politicians had until then considered the center of all the collaborators who were
preparing a war against the USSR, also changed. By Fall 1934, the Soviet Union already had a permanent seat in the League of Nations
Council. In the meantime, nearly all the countries in Europe were vying to get Moscow on their side. For example, in Summer 1933, the USSR
signed a mutual non-aggression pact with France. Following Paris’s suit, Poland, the countries of the Petite Entente and the Baltic countries
took similar steps. The pilgrim’s trail of British politicians to Moscow also grew larger. English circles were amazed that at a banquet for Anthony
Eden in Moscow “God save the King” was played and Soviet officials stood for it. 1933 was also the year that diplomatic relations were
established between the US and the USSR. [7, p. 25]
The changing attitude of western states to the Soviet Union could be seen in the holding of the World Economic Conference in London in June-
July 1933. The USSR participated in the conference, the first time it was invited to such an international venue. After the conference ended, an
International Grain Commission began to work in London. It was responsible for setting norms for the export of grain from various countries,
including the Soviet Union. The Union was allocated the maximum quota, 25mn centners. But its representatives tried to get this raised to 85mn
centners. No one asked how the Soviet Union could export such an enormous amount of grain when soviet citizens were dying of hunger.
Everybody was excited about the prospects of cheap trade with the bolsheviks. [13, p. 21]
In the meantime, the famine in Ukraine continued. At this point a group of Ukrainian politicians, many from Eastern Halychyna, made a desperate
attempt to rescue their brothers and sisters in the east. A Ukrainian Civic Committee to Rescue Ukraine was set up in L’viv. Its representatives
appeared in Switzerland at the beginning of September 1933. They decided to try to get the subject of the Holodomor raised at the Congress of
European Nationalities. These congresses gathered every year, just before the September session of the League of Nations.
The organizers of the Congress were against having the issue of the famine raised, arguing that events in the USSR did not lie within their
sphere of competence. But the Ukrainian proposal was supported by representatives of many German groups, because German settlers in
Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus were also suffering from the famine. In addition, the first anti-Semitic laws had just been passed in
Germany. It was easy to see that this issue would come up at the Congress and would draw the attention of the world community. So the
Germans were interested in seeing that the issue of its anti-Semitic change of course was dampened by an even more urgent matter. And this
could only be something like a famine. On September 16, 1933, the well-known Eastern Halychyna community activist, Maria Rudnytska,
presented a report on the famine at the inaugural session of the Congress. The Congress then passed a resolution requesting that the
presidium hand this report directly to the President of the League of Nations Council. [4, p. 34]
All actions on the territory of the League of Nations were regulated by very complicated procedures. Every Council session was prepared well in
advance. This meant that there was no way that the issue of the Famine could be added to the agenda at the last minute. The Ukrainians were
helped by the fact that the current president of the League of Nations Council was not a representative of a large state, who would be stopped by
the demands of “high politics,” but the prime minister of “Little Norway,” J. L. Movinkel. On September 29, 1933, he called together a session of
the Council to discuss “the catastrophic famine in Ukraine.”
True, the session was not made public, but happened behind closed doors. Present at the session were only representatives of those countries
that had a temporary or permanent seat on the Council. The session was long and heated. When the head put the question, no one denied the
fact of a famine. But representatives of those countries who saw their interests in political and economic cooperation with the USSR begged
formal complications with the League of Nations taking an official position on the famine. They argued that the matter concerned a country that
was not even a member of the League and one that, as they put it, had not indicated its own preference.
Movinkel himself took the floor four times and declared that his country was willing to make the largest donations to help those dying of hunger.
The President of the Council was supported by Ireland, Germany and Spain. However, the majority was of the thought that the League Council
had no authority to act directly. In the end, they decided to pass the matter on to the International Red Cross and appeal to it to organize
international assistance for Ukraine.
In this way, the League of Nations, using procedural obstacles as an excuse, Pilate-like, quietly washed its hands of Ukraine. The discussion at
the League of Nations Council was echoed at the December session of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. M. I. Kalinin had this to
say about Mr. Movinkel and his supporters: “These political con-artists are collecting money to help the supposedly hungry in Ukraine. Only
degenerate classes in a state of disintegration could possibly give birth to such cynical types.” [6, p. 44]
The first person to turn to the US Government on the issue of the famine was a German Mennonite emigrant from Russia, then Americans and
Canadians of Ukrainian origins. But Secretary of State Corden Hall answered, “Unfortunately, perhaps, there are currently no measures that the
Government could use to ease the suffering of these victims.” The State Department put together its own formulaic response to appeals
regarding the Holodomor based on the above and repeated it more than once. [11, p. 293]
In the end, we would like to make a few comments. Firstly, we would like to confirm that the widespread view that supposedly the West did not
know about the famine because the bolsheviks managed to cover it up so well is not the way it really was. The truth is that the Kremlin’s killers
did everything possible to hide their crime, but the truth is also that the world had enough reports, especially eye-witness testimony and other
indubitable evidence of the heartbreaking tragedy that took place over the course of two years on Ukrainian soil.
Equally obvious is that the West had enough leverage to have averted or at least lessened the catastrophic famine. The Governments of western
countries had the option to force Moscow to allow their assistance to get to Ukraine by stopping the export of Soviet machinery. In the first place,
they should have stopped buying foodstuffs from the USSR and prevented the Soviet Government from exporting them beyond its borders. In
short, some moral responsibility can without doubt be laid at the feet of the civilized world for the victims of Bolshevik genocide.
3. Foreign historical writing on the Holodomor
When assessing the point of view of available western histories on the reasons for the Holodomor of 1932-33, it becomes clear that most of
their research is in answer to the question: Was Stalin’s policy driven by the need to extract all available grain to feed the cities and for export, or
was it a desire to destroy nationalism and demands for autonomy in Ukraine? American sovietologist A. Ulam claims that the reasons for the
tragedy are primarily in economic circumstance and mistakes in the agricultural policy of Stalin and his circle.
Quite a few western researchers are of the same opinion. For instance, V. Holubnychiy points to the lack of evidence that Stalin intentionally
planned the famine. English economist A. Nouve [???] says the excessive extraction of grain from villagers was one of the main reasons for the
famine. According to an American historian, M. Levin, the famine was the result of a number of factors, but the main one was collectivization,
which led to complete chaos in farm production. Thus, these authors focus on the economic basis for the famine. Still, there is also a viewpoint
among foreign historians that the roots of the Holodomor need to be sought in the anti-rural, anti-Ukrainian focus of Stalinist policy.
This thesis, which has found scientific support among contemporary researchers, has been particularly supported by Ukrainian émigré
historiography. For instance, scholars V. Hryshko and I. Vytvytskiy say that the main reason for the catastrophe was not in the chaotic and
accelerated collectivization that took place under Moscow’s direction but in a deliberate policy to wreck Ukraine. [2, pp 97-98]
In terms of the appropriateness of using the term “genocide” in regard to Stalin’s policy towards Ukraine at the beginning of the 1930s, then
there are, again, generally two positions in western literature. A slew of authors, including James Mace and Robert Conquest say that the famine
had a primarily anti-Ukrainian purpose and that it was genocide against Ukrainians. They see the “Great Terror” in the context of the theory and
practice of national policies in the USSR. Conquest’s book, Harvest of Sorrow, was published at the end of the 1960s and for many years was
the only complete work on the Holodomor in Ukraine. [12, p. 30]
But many scholars do not share this thesis about the “anti-Ukrainian bent” of the famine. For instance, A. Tallin points to the lack of grounds to
confirm that the famine was deliberately aimed against Ukrainians. J. Colon shares this viewpoint, saying that it was a terrible, horrifying event,
but it was not genocide. [2, pp 103-104]
The concept and consequences of the crime of genocide are governed by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1948, where it clearly states that the term “genocide” includes all acts that are
carried out with the intention of partly or fully destroying any national, ethnic or racial group. Among these acts are the deliberate creation of such
living conditions for any such group as will lead to its partial or full destruction. In our opinion, what happened in Ukraine was precisely this kind
of action on the part of the Communist government, aimed against Ukrainians.
The next document is the Convention on Removing Statutory Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, which was adopted by
the UN General Assembly on November 26, 1968. This Convention declares that no statutory limitations can be placed on a number of crimes,
regardless of when they took place. According to the 1948 Convention, genocide is among these crimes, even if it was not a violation of domestic
laws of the country where it took place. According to the norms of international law, a law can have a backdated effect when it comes to crimes
against humanity. And the Holodomor of 1932-1933 is undoubtedly such a crime. In short, despite the fact that both Conventions were adopted
later, in the 1940s and 1960s, their effect extends to the crimes of the 1930s. [10, pp 497-502]
Interest in the subject of the Holodomor grew considerably in the West at the beginning of the 1980s. The memoirs of V. Kravchenko, V. Hryshko,
B. Marchenko, and O. Voropai were published. Walter Dushnyk described the genocide and Leo Cooper’s book “Preventing genocide” came
out. The first international conference called “Famine, Genocide, 1933” took place in Montreal in March 1983, after which 10 of the reports
presented at the conference were published in a collection. The Montreal conference was covered in both the anglophone and francophone
media.
In 1984, Y. Luhoviy and S. Novytskiy finished putting together their documentary film called “Harvest of Grief.” However, communists and
sovietophiles protested against the film, as did other opponents of Ukraine’s “bid for” historical truth. In 1987, Canadian author Douglas Toll
published a book entitled, “Deceit, Hunger and Fascism: The Ukrainian myth of genocide from Hitler to Harvard.” The author presented the film
and the desire of Ukrainians to attract the attention of the world by genocide as an ordinary attempt by nazi collaborators to pull the wool over
everyone’s eyes. A few professors of history from Canadian universities joined him in discrediting the film: Clarence, David Wyefel and Lynn
Viola. In 1990, the international conference on the famine was held in Toronto, by which time it was joined by Ukrainian scholars. [14, pp 136-146
]
Unfortunately, this tragedy of global significance continued to not be given the necessary attention in western countries. The few attempts by
researchers to paint an objective picture of events in Ukraine were inevitably accompanied by accusations of twisting and fixing the facts and of
crypto-nazi attitudes. The reason for this appeared to be the hostile reaction of the USSR to information about the famine in the western press,
which they called anti-soviet propaganda and accused the journalists of being in someone’s pay. WWII had turned the USSR from an enemy to
an ally [sic]. The topic of the famine had been moved to the back burner.
Later, accusations against the Stalin regime for the famine for some reason became unacceptable in the West. Once the Cold War began, the
West seemed to think it inappropriate to use this subject in the ideological war with their opponent. Keeping the memory of the Holodomor alive
for many years became the work of the Ukrainian diaspora.
4. The International Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933
In 1984, the World Congress of Free Ukrainians turned to a slew of lawyers and legal scholars from all over the world with a plea to participate in
researching the famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933. They also initiated the setting up of an International Commission to study the famine in
Ukraine. It included world-famous practicing lawyers and scholarly theorists.
The organizational meeting of the Commission took place in Toronto on February 12, 1988l. The main tasks that stood before this non-
government body were to determine: the reality and duration of the famine; the reason or reasons for the famine; the consequences for Ukraine
and its people; and recommendations regarding responsibility for having organized the famine. The Commission’s sources of information were
eye-witness testimony, reports in the western press, diplomatic sources, soviet archives, and scholarly work.
The closing session of the Commission took place in London on November 15-18, 1989. Based on its objectives, the Commission came to a
number of conclusions. There could no longer be any doubt that there was a massive famine in Ukraine. The famine began at the end of
summer in 1932, reached its peak in the spring of 1933 and ended at the beginning of the summer in 1933. It encompassed all the territory
within the political boundaries of Ukraine, as well as the Don and Kuban regions and was clearly directed at those areas where ethnic
Ukrainians were in the majority. The Commission did not find any explanation as to why territories with Russian populations managed to avoid
the famine.
The Commission was also not able to come up with a firm figure as to the number of victims of the famine, but there is no doubt that it was at
least 4.5 million. This is based on the argument that in the USSR as a whole the population grew 15.7% while in Ukraine it contracted. The
immediate reason for the famine was the excessive consignment of grain. In addition, the root of the famine can be sought in the forced
collectivization of farming, in the “de-kurkulization” of the peasants themselves, and in the desire of the central soviet government to cast a blow
against traditional Ukrainian nationalism. All these methods and measures had one goal in mind: to destroy the Ukrainian nation and famine
was the means to this political end.
The famine was man-made, that is, its direct reasons were based in human actions. The central government was well-informed about the state
of affairs in Ukraine, but deliberately held back from any measures that might improve the situation prior to Summer 1933. Meanwhile,
warehouses were overflowing with food products. Propositions for assistance from international NGOs were turned down by the bolsheviks.
The Soviet Government used a variety of legal measures to increase the destructive impact of the famine: the ukase of August 7, 1932, which
forbade taking any produce that was in a storehouse or in the open; the ukases of September 13, 1932 and March 17, 1933, which forbade
villagers to leave their collective farms without the permission of the kolhosp management; and the ukase of December 4, 1932 that forbade
victims of the famine to move from place to place without permission.
In the opinion of the Commission, responsibility for the famine lay with the leadership of the Soviet Union. In terms of the issue whether the
Holodomor of 1932-33 was specifically genocide against the Ukrainian people, the Commission considered two questions: 1) What evidence of
this crime was there in the actions of the government? and 2) What norms can be applied to determine that genocide is going on under cover of
a famine? According to generally accepted notions, three elements are necessary to determine that a series of events qualifies as genocide: the
presence of a specific national, ethnic, racial or religious group; intentions to destroy this particular group in whole or in part; and specific actions
such as killing, physical or psychological damage, deliberate creation of living conditions for the targeted group that are likely to physically
destroy it, measures to prevent new births in the group, and more. When it comes to the famine of 1932-1933, the first and third conditions are
clearly present. It is somewhat harder to prove the existence of the second condition, the intent to destroy the particular group.
At that point, the Commission did not have serious evidence that the famine was really organized by the Soviet Government for the purpose of
carrying out its policies. However, it was very clear to the members of the Commission that the Stalin regime took advantage of the famine that
began to promote its interests. One point of evidence that a national group was being destroyed was the fact that the cities were almost
untouched by the famine. It was directed at the countryside and small settlements, which were ethnically Ukrainian, while the larger cities were
mostly ethnically Russian.
The Commission thus offered its considered opinion that genocide was taking place against ethnic Ukrainians and was in contravention of
international legal norms in effect at the time. The evidence that the Commission presented confirmed that the crime carried out by Soviet
leadership during the famine in 1932-1933 had the all the features of a crime against humanity. However, the members of the Commission
were not unanimous in their conclusions. For instance, Prof. George Levasseur did not agree that what took place qualified as genocide under
the terms of the 1948 Convention, a position that was supported by General Counsel Hunter.
As we can see, the results of the Commission’s work were a kind of summary of the international debates and controversies that surrounded
events in Ukraine in 1932-1933. And although the conclusions of the Commission were not unanimous, the overall outcome was a strong
answer to those who doubted that there had been a famine in Ukraine and for those who did not see anything special in one of the greatest
tragedies of the 20th century. For those who denied the tragedy of Ukrainians, it became an opportunity to make an easy reputation and dirty
money. [9]
Conclusions
The end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s was one of the most terrible periods in the modern history of Ukraine. The Bolshevik party,
in carrying out its policies, became the newest hangman of Ukraine. This policy was aimed at destroying the leading activists in science, culture,
the arts and education. The flower of the Ukrainian nation was persecuted. Still, this was not enough for the Stalin regime. Under the guise of
collecting grain, which supposedly was being hampered by “kurkuls [kulaks]” and “enemies of the people,” the complete confiscation of all food
stores among Ukrainian peasants began in the summer of 1932. The country was doomed to a hungry death.
The cynicism and violence of the bolsheviks knew no limits, while the methods of those in power said only one thing—that the famine was a
deliberate action that had two aims: to take all grain away from the villagers in order to sell it abroad and pay for industrialization, and to destroy
as many Ukrainians as possible and give the freed-up areas over to ethnic Russians. They reached their goal at a terrible cost: more than five
million Ukrainians died as a result of the famine. Not in the deserts of Africa, not in Asia, but on the richest chornozem in the world, in the 20th
century.
This scale of tragedy could not have gone unnoticed in the West. Despite all the efforts the bolsheviks used to prevent information from getting to
the West, European society was informed about what was happening in Ukraine. In this, it was assisted in the main by journalists and
diplomatic staff. The most accurate information about the situation was in the hands of foreign media. Still, by buying off journalists and providing
theatrical “showcases” about the “happy life of Ukrainian villagers,” the bolsheviks were able to ensure that, parallel to reports of the terrible
famine in Ukraine, the western press also had their complete opposite.
There is no doubt that the governments of western countries were also well informed about the Holodomor. But the situation was such that they
put their own political and economic interests above the lives of millions of human victims. Not a single step was taken at the government level to
prevent the tragedy. Either they ignored the famine altogether or they said that intervention was unacceptable.
This position on the part of the West led to a situation where, for the longest time, the matter was not really researched in history, while
unquestionable documented testimony and reports by eye-witnesses were often branded as pro-nazi. Only in the 1980s was there a sudden
rise in interest in the West to the events of half a century earlier. The International Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933
offered a kind of summing up of the few discussions among foreign scholars that had taken place when it published its conclusions in 1990.
Those results confirmed the man-made nature of the famine and its scale, and determined that those responsible for the Holodomor were the
then-leadership of the USSR.
Bibliography
1. Veryha, V., Beyond the Fatherland, a collection of research articles and documents, collected and with a foreword by M. Lytvyn, 2002, 364 pp
2. The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: Through the eyes of historians, the language of documents, team editor: R. Y Pyrih, Kyiv, Politvydav
Ukraine, 1990, 605 pp
3. Hrytsak, Y. Y., An Outline of Ukrainian History: The formation of the modern Ukrainian nation in the 19th and 20th centuries, Kyiv, Geneza,
1996, 360 pp
4. Hryshko, I. V., Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears: The tragedy of Ukraine in 1933 seen 30 years later (1933-1963), New York, 1963
5. Zhukovskiy, A., Contemporary French Press on the Famine in Ukraine, Suchasnist, 1983, Nº10, pp 43-48
6. Kyrychuk, Y., The Famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine and the West, Repuspublikanets, 1996, Nº5, pp 43-45
7. For whom was the Holodomor convenient?, Articles, Kyiv, MAUP, 2003, 56 pp
8. Conquest, R., Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet collectivization and the Terror Famine, translated from the English, Kyiv, Lybid, 1993, 384 pp
9. International Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933, Final report, 1990, Kyiv, 1992
10. International Conventions on Human Rights, collection of papers, Moscow, Norma, 2000, 784 pp
11. Mace, James, Selected memoirs: The Holodomor in Ukraine, Ukraine Incognita, general editor: L. Ivshyna, Kyiv, Fant, 2002, 400 pp
12. Morochko, V. I., Conceptual Foundations of Western European and Russian Historical Writings on the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in
Ukraine, Ukrainian Historical Journal, 2003, Nº5, pp 125-145
13. Mukhina, M., Submission through famine, 36 documents, Kyiv, 1993
14. Serbyn, R., The Genocide in Ukraine Through the Eyes of the World Community, Pamiat Stolit, 2003, Nº3, pp 136-146
15. Sodatenkov, V., Hungry ’33, Subjective thoughts on an objective process, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia (Weekly Mirror), 2003, Nº24, pp 20-21
16. Shapoval, Y., The Cheka, GPU and NKVD in Ukraine: People, facts, documents, Kyiv, 1993, Nº8
The Holodomor of 1932-1933 and reaction to it in the West
Andriy Rybak
Student in the Humanities Faculty (History)
National University of the Ostroh Academy
Ostroh, Ukraine - 2004
Introduction
1. The Famine in Ukraine and its portrayal in the Western press
2. Reaction among Western governments to events in Ukraine in 1932-1933
3. Foreign historical writing on the Holodomor
4. The International Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933
Conclusions
Bibliography
Introduction
The 20th century was one of the most dramatic in the history of Ukraine. The fate of our people included no small number of terrible trials. Among
these, the most horrible was undoubtedly the Famine of 1932-33, which took the lives of 8 million people during peacetime. This was a true
catastrophe for Ukrainians whose catastrophic consequences we are feeling to this day.
The historic Ukrainian countryside, with its customs and traditions, was destroyed, to be replaced by kolhosp country. Famine and persecution
seeded social fear, political apathy among citizens, and passivity. The newly-introduced kolhosp system deadened any sense of individuality,
which had been the foundation of the identity of the Ukrainian peasant. The Holodomor broke the chain of generations in the development of the
Ukrainian elite and put an end to the ukrainianization of the country’s urban areas. Instead, the cities became even more open to Russians. The
depopulated villages were settled by immigrants from Russia and the Northern Caucasus. The results of the “russianization” of Eastern Ukraine
are evident to this day.
The issue of reviving the historical truth about the genocide against Ukrainians and judging those responsible for this tragedy remains
exceptionally significant to this day. Unfortunately, the civilized world has not reached this point yet. Our requests that the UN recognize the
famine of 1932-33 as an act of genocide against our people have gone unheard. Our requests that it be acknowledged as one of the greatest
human tragedies of the 20th century have gone largely unnoticed in world historical writings and journalism. But Ukrainian émigré communities
deserve credit, both for their tireless efforts to draw the attention of western communities and in their research into the “Ukrainian Golgotha.”
With the announcement of Ukraine’s independence, writers like V. I. Morochko, M. Mukhina, Y. Kyrychuk, Y. Hrytsak and others have undertaken
to study the Holodomor. They have been able to use previously inaccessible archives that describe the events of 1932-33 objectively.
In this work, we will attempt to determine to what extent the West was informed about events in Ukraine, what the reaction of the governments of
major European countries was, and what the current historical viewpoint on the murder by famine [Holodomor] against Ukrainians in 1932-33 is.
The goal of this paper is to study the resonance of the Holodomor in Ukraine in Western countries.
With this goal in mind, we set ourselves these objectives:
• to determine the awareness level of European society regarding events in Ukraine;
• to research the international situation and the reaction of European governments;
• to trace the position taken in foreign studies regarding the issue of the famine in Ukraine;
• to study the results of the work of the International Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine.
Based on these objectives, this paper has been organized into four sections.
1. The Famine in Ukraine and its portrayal in the Western press
By the end of the 1920s, Josef Stalin was consolidating his position within the Communist Party, which made it possible for him to concentrate
on carrying out his policies. From 1928 on, there was a clear return to the methods of “war communism.” The epitome of this new direction was
the introduction in May 1929 of the first Five-Year Plan, with its aim of “building a socialist order.” “The beginning of building socialism” has been
characterized by mass persecutions and executions, and the idea of an “all-out class war” picked up pace. According to communists, the “class
war had a specific national aspect” in Ukraine. In July 1929, massive arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia began and the so-called “Union for
the Liberation of Ukraine” affair was fabricated. This is when such activists as S. Yevremov, V. Slabchenko, Y. Germaise, and others were
persecuted. Over 1930-34, 24 of the 34 bishops of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church were arrested, and another 8 disappeared
without trace.
In February 1931, another wave of arrests began, the so-called “Ukrainian National Center” affair. This time, most of those arrested and shipped
off were mostly activists who had returned to Ukraine in the 1920s. Among them was Mykhailo Hrushevskiy, a famous historian and the first
president of independent Ukraine in 1918. One year later, the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party (b) accused the Communist
Party (b) of Ukraine of tolerating “Ukrainian nationalistic tendencies.” In the period between June 1932 and May 1933, as a result of repression,
the Ukrainian Communist Party shrank from 520,000 to 285,000 members.
Meanwhile, in November 1929, total collectivization was declared the soviet goal. That year, prices for grain began to fall all over Europe. That is,
in order to make a considerable profit from the sale of grain abroad, the USSR needed to increase its deliveries. War was declared against
peasants. From Summer 1932 on, all foodstuffs began to be confiscated among rural dwellers, accompanied by “de-kurkulization,” the term
“kurkul” or wealthy farmer being applied to those who had managed to cover their roofs with tin. On August 7, 1932, a resolution was issued “On
the protection of the property of state enterprises, farms and cooperatives and on strengthening community ownership.” Now it was considered
stealing to take even a handful of grain and such people were subject to severe punishment. The resolution was nicknamed the “law of five
ears,” meaning five ears of grain.
On December 14, 1932, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) passed another resolution, “On grain production in
Ukraine.” It was essentially aimed at completely removing all stores of food on territory inhabited by Ukrainians [7, p. 23] That same month, the
system of internal passports was introduced, which attached villagers to their villages. In order to confiscate produce from peasants, the army
and the police were used, as well as “towing brigades.” Moreover, the famine was restricted to Ukrainian territories. Squadrons patrolled the
borders and did not allow people to cross into Russia, Poland or Rumania. [16, p. 179]
Meanwhile, storehouses and railway stations were overflowing with grain and potatoes. They were rotting under the open sky, but anybody who
tried to get to these life-sustaining products was shot on the spot. This is all clear evidence of the deliberate and targeted nature of this effort to
destroy millions of Ukrainians. To the now-free land and the empty villages, people from central Russia and the northern Caucasus were moved
in.
In general, there were three categories of foreigners living in the USSR in 1932-33 who had fairly accurate information about the catastrophic
famine. In the first place, there were the diplomats, then the engineers and other professionals who were working for the USSR during its
industrialization phase, and finally, there were the journalists and writers.
There is no doubt that the best-informed about the tragic situation in Ukraine were the embassies and consulates of foreign countries in
Moscow and their trade representatives. But diplomatic notices and reports about the famine remained in the secret archives of the various
Foreign Ministries and did not get disseminated to the broader public. Obviously, the best information was in the hands of the Italians, who had a
consulate in the capital of the Ukrainian SSR. These documents, with their hand-written comments in the famed blue pencil of Benito Mussolini,
were found by representatives of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Rome.
Possibly the most interesting testimony was dated May 31, 1933: “Famine and the Ukrainian question.” According to Cardinal Gredingo, there
was little doubt that the famine was artificially instigated in order to “change the ethnic composition of Ukraine” and to “solve the Ukrainian
question once and for all.” “Ukrainian lands depopulated,” wrote S. Gredingo in his report on a trip by plane from Kharkiv to Odesa and back. He
provided a considerable amount of important detail about the terror unleashed upon Ukrainian peasantry and about their negative attitude
towards those in power. In his notes, he also drew attention to the pragmatic, inhuman nature of Stalin’s policies. [13, p. 115]
Another invaluable source of information was the testimony of domestic experts and businesspeople who traveled around the USSR as
representatives of industrial and trading companies, so-called “returnees” who had been prisoners of war during WWI, German settlers who
had legally moved to Ukraine from the USSR, and Ukrainian villagers who were lucky enough to get across the Zbruch or the Dnister. Their
testimony made it to the pages of the world press.
Among the foreigners who knew about the real state of affairs in Ukraine were engineers and workers who came to the USSR during the first
Five-Year Plan period. During the Great Famine, there were as many as 5,000 of them, mostly Germans. Since they were living among the
locals, they obviously knew the truth. Still, being in a working relationship with the Soviet Government and earning high salaries, they kept quiet.
Only in their letters to their families and during their home leaves did they occasionally and very cautiously mention what they had seen. [8, p. 241]
The third category of foreigners who were undoubtedly informed about the famine was western European and American writers who were in the
Soviet Union during this period.
The story of the famine in Ukraine first found its way to the pages of an English-language paper in March 1933, when Garrett Jones, a reporter for
the Manchester Guardian, and, in his footsteps, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote about what they had seen there. They both happened to be traveling
in Ukraine at the same time. Moscow immediately closed off this territory to journalists. In response, two American correspondents, Walter
Duranty from the New York Times and Louis Fisher of “The Nation,” became the first to completely deny that there was a famine in Ukraine. [11,
p. 292] Years later, the US Congressional Commission on the Famine in Ukraine came to conclusion that a slew of American journalists,
including Duranty, had been collaborating with soviet circles in keeping quiet about the famine.
By contrast, Le Figaro, a French paper, the Neuer Züricher Zeitung and the Gazette Lausanne all published articles about the famine taking place
in the Ukrainian countryside. Altogether, more than 60 articles on the famine were printed in the English, French and German press. [12, p. 128]
But censorship of press filings by foreign correspondents was intensified. According to French journalist Pierre Berlian, only such euphemisms
as “difficulties with food products” were able to get through.
At the beginning of 1933, an order came out that forbade foreign journalists to leave Moscow. They could now only travel with the specific
permission of the NKVD and only along a specific route that had been previously approved. In the meantime, all of Ukraine was declared off-
limits to correspondents. This isolation of Ukraine continued to September 1933. At this time there was considerable bribery and paying off of the
foreign press. The Communist Party of Ukraine was very generous in its “subsidies” of many employees of foreign papers. [6, p. 43]
Despite the fact that journalists knew well what was really going on in Ukraine, many of them, freely or otherwise, were drawn into the great
“conspiracy of silence.” The efforts of the Soviet government to hide the catastrophic famine at all costs undoubtedly played a role as well. No
soviet paper was allowed to even hint that there might be a famine. It was impossible to talk about it in public, either, and even the word “famine”
became taboo. It was dangerous to use it. Doctors were forbidden to give famine as a cause of sickness or death. The Soviet Government
stopped publishing population statistics. If it had numbers about the death toll of the famine, it was keeping them under lock and key.
Still, the scale of the catastrophe was so enormous that even the rigid laws of the Bolshevik police system found it impossible to hide it from the
world. The Austrian press, for one, was very much on the side of Ukraine. On December 16–18, 1933, there was even a conference on the
Holodomor in Vienna. Because of this event, the International Committee to Help the Hungry in the USSR was formed, under the leadership of
Cardinal Teodor Innitzer. [12, p. 128] But the Soviet Government categorically denied that there was any kind of famine in Ukraine. It branded any
reports about famine as slander and anti-soviet propaganda and labeled those who disseminated it “fascist agents.”
The bolsheviks decided to counter the testimony of credible eye-witnesses with the testimony of its own “witnesses.” As soon as early spring
1933, a group of English writers led by G. B. Shaw traveled to the USSR. The visit was so masterfully organized that on their return to London,
they printed a statement in the Manchester Guardian that declared that all reports of famine a fantasy and a lie.
Shaw was not the only westerner infatuated with the USSR. The mania of sovietophilism was widespread among the intellectual elite of the
West. R. Rolland, who then lived in Switzerland, would wave his arms as though chasing flies whenever someone told him about the famine in
Ukraine. “I don’t want to hear about this. My obligation is to fight the closer and greater evil. I’m fighting Hitlerism,” he would repeat with the
intensity of a madman. The position of Shaw and Rolland was shared by other famous western European writers such as Barbuse, Huxley, and
the Webbs. [8, pp 348-349]
Well-known French politician, Eduard Herriot, who was in the Soviet Union at the end of August in 1933 also played a role as a Bolshevik
propaganda tool. In his articles and public speeches, he regularly stated that any reports about famine and destitution in Ukraine were “an
absurd myth.” [2, p. 89]
As we can see, both objective information about events in Ukraine and complete denial of those events circulated abroad. Yet there is no doubt
that government circles across Europe knew very well what was going on.
2. Reaction among Western governments to events in Ukraine in 1932-1933
This issue, in our opinion, raises the question about the joint responsibility of the civilized world for the crime that of starving several million
Ukrainians to death. Could the major countries have influenced the Soviet Government and prevented this catastrophe? Or could they at least
have reduced its scale, saving some of the victims from death? Why didn’t the world rush to help Ukraine? The key to all these questions lies in
the international situation in the 1930s.
In January 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Democratic western countries, who had no idea, then, of the deadly danger Red
Moscow represented to them, considered it the lesser of two evils, compared to the threat of Nazi Germany. This situation was completely taken
advantage of by Soviet diplomats. For the USSR was also frightened by the changes in Germany and was looking for new guarantees of its own
security. Thus, based on their mutual antagonism to Hitler’s Germany, the bolsheviks and western democracies found common ground.
Unexpectedly, the bolsheviks began to defend the Treaty of Versailles, which they had not long before classified as “most shameless and
predator” and whose authors they had called “a band of pirates.”
The Soviet position on the League of Nations, which Soviet politicians had until then considered the center of all the collaborators who were
preparing a war against the USSR, also changed. By Fall 1934, the Soviet Union already had a permanent seat in the League of Nations
Council. In the meantime, nearly all the countries in Europe were vying to get Moscow on their side. For example, in Summer 1933, the USSR
signed a mutual non-aggression pact with France. Following Paris’s suit, Poland, the countries of the Petite Entente and the Baltic countries
took similar steps. The pilgrim’s trail of British politicians to Moscow also grew larger. English circles were amazed that at a banquet for Anthony
Eden in Moscow “God save the King” was played and Soviet officials stood for it. 1933 was also the year that diplomatic relations were
established between the US and the USSR. [7, p. 25]
The changing attitude of western states to the Soviet Union could be seen in the holding of the World Economic Conference in London in June-
July 1933. The USSR participated in the conference, the first time it was invited to such an international venue. After the conference ended, an
International Grain Commission began to work in London. It was responsible for setting norms for the export of grain from various countries,
including the Soviet Union. The Union was allocated the maximum quota, 25mn centners. But its representatives tried to get this raised to 85mn
centners. No one asked how the Soviet Union could export such an enormous amount of grain when soviet citizens were dying of hunger.
Everybody was excited about the prospects of cheap trade with the bolsheviks. [13, p. 21]
In the meantime, the famine in Ukraine continued. At this point a group of Ukrainian politicians, many from Eastern Halychyna, made a desperate
attempt to rescue their brothers and sisters in the east. A Ukrainian Civic Committee to Rescue Ukraine was set up in L’viv. Its representatives
appeared in Switzerland at the beginning of September 1933. They decided to try to get the subject of the Holodomor raised at the Congress of
European Nationalities. These congresses gathered every year, just before the September session of the League of Nations.
The organizers of the Congress were against having the issue of the famine raised, arguing that events in the USSR did not lie within their
sphere of competence. But the Ukrainian proposal was supported by representatives of many German groups, because German settlers in
Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus were also suffering from the famine. In addition, the first anti-Semitic laws had just been passed in
Germany. It was easy to see that this issue would come up at the Congress and would draw the attention of the world community. So the
Germans were interested in seeing that the issue of its anti-Semitic change of course was dampened by an even more urgent matter. And this
could only be something like a famine. On September 16, 1933, the well-known Eastern Halychyna community activist, Maria Rudnytska,
presented a report on the famine at the inaugural session of the Congress. The Congress then passed a resolution requesting that the
presidium hand this report directly to the President of the League of Nations Council. [4, p. 34]
All actions on the territory of the League of Nations were regulated by very complicated procedures. Every Council session was prepared well in
advance. This meant that there was no way that the issue of the Famine could be added to the agenda at the last minute. The Ukrainians were
helped by the fact that the current president of the League of Nations Council was not a representative of a large state, who would be stopped by
the demands of “high politics,” but the prime minister of “Little Norway,” J. L. Movinkel. On September 29, 1933, he called together a session of
the Council to discuss “the catastrophic famine in Ukraine.”
True, the session was not made public, but happened behind closed doors. Present at the session were only representatives of those countries
that had a temporary or permanent seat on the Council. The session was long and heated. When the head put the question, no one denied the
fact of a famine. But representatives of those countries who saw their interests in political and economic cooperation with the USSR begged
formal complications with the League of Nations taking an official position on the famine. They argued that the matter concerned a country that
was not even a member of the League and one that, as they put it, had not indicated its own preference.
Movinkel himself took the floor four times and declared that his country was willing to make the largest donations to help those dying of hunger.
The President of the Council was supported by Ireland, Germany and Spain. However, the majority was of the thought that the League Council
had no authority to act directly. In the end, they decided to pass the matter on to the International Red Cross and appeal to it to organize
international assistance for Ukraine.
In this way, the League of Nations, using procedural obstacles as an excuse, Pilate-like, quietly washed its hands of Ukraine. The discussion at
the League of Nations Council was echoed at the December session of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. M. I. Kalinin had this to
say about Mr. Movinkel and his supporters: “These political con-artists are collecting money to help the supposedly hungry in Ukraine. Only
degenerate classes in a state of disintegration could possibly give birth to such cynical types.” [6, p. 44]
The first person to turn to the US Government on the issue of the famine was a German Mennonite emigrant from Russia, then Americans and
Canadians of Ukrainian origins. But Secretary of State Corden Hall answered, “Unfortunately, perhaps, there are currently no measures that the
Government could use to ease the suffering of these victims.” The State Department put together its own formulaic response to appeals
regarding the Holodomor based on the above and repeated it more than once. [11, p. 293]
In the end, we would like to make a few comments. Firstly, we would like to confirm that the widespread view that supposedly the West did not
know about the famine because the bolsheviks managed to cover it up so well is not the way it really was. The truth is that the Kremlin’s killers
did everything possible to hide their crime, but the truth is also that the world had enough reports, especially eye-witness testimony and other
indubitable evidence of the heartbreaking tragedy that took place over the course of two years on Ukrainian soil.
Equally obvious is that the West had enough leverage to have averted or at least lessened the catastrophic famine. The Governments of western
countries had the option to force Moscow to allow their assistance to get to Ukraine by stopping the export of Soviet machinery. In the first place,
they should have stopped buying foodstuffs from the USSR and prevented the Soviet Government from exporting them beyond its borders. In
short, some moral responsibility can without doubt be laid at the feet of the civilized world for the victims of Bolshevik genocide.
3. Foreign historical writing on the Holodomor
When assessing the point of view of available western histories on the reasons for the Holodomor of 1932-33, it becomes clear that most of
their research is in answer to the question: Was Stalin’s policy driven by the need to extract all available grain to feed the cities and for export, or
was it a desire to destroy nationalism and demands for autonomy in Ukraine? American sovietologist A. Ulam claims that the reasons for the
tragedy are primarily in economic circumstance and mistakes in the agricultural policy of Stalin and his circle.
Quite a few western researchers are of the same opinion. For instance, V. Holubnychiy points to the lack of evidence that Stalin intentionally
planned the famine. English economist A. Nouve [???] says the excessive extraction of grain from villagers was one of the main reasons for the
famine. According to an American historian, M. Levin, the famine was the result of a number of factors, but the main one was collectivization,
which led to complete chaos in farm production. Thus, these authors focus on the economic basis for the famine. Still, there is also a viewpoint
among foreign historians that the roots of the Holodomor need to be sought in the anti-rural, anti-Ukrainian focus of Stalinist policy.
This thesis, which has found scientific support among contemporary researchers, has been particularly supported by Ukrainian émigré
historiography. For instance, scholars V. Hryshko and I. Vytvytskiy say that the main reason for the catastrophe was not in the chaotic and
accelerated collectivization that took place under Moscow’s direction but in a deliberate policy to wreck Ukraine. [2, pp 97-98]
In terms of the appropriateness of using the term “genocide” in regard to Stalin’s policy towards Ukraine at the beginning of the 1930s, then
there are, again, generally two positions in western literature. A slew of authors, including James Mace and Robert Conquest say that the famine
had a primarily anti-Ukrainian purpose and that it was genocide against Ukrainians. They see the “Great Terror” in the context of the theory and
practice of national policies in the USSR. Conquest’s book, Harvest of Sorrow, was published at the end of the 1960s and for many years was
the only complete work on the Holodomor in Ukraine. [12, p. 30]
But many scholars do not share this thesis about the “anti-Ukrainian bent” of the famine. For instance, A. Tallin points to the lack of grounds to
confirm that the famine was deliberately aimed against Ukrainians. J. Colon shares this viewpoint, saying that it was a terrible, horrifying event,
but it was not genocide. [2, pp 103-104]
The concept and consequences of the crime of genocide are governed by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1948, where it clearly states that the term “genocide” includes all acts that are
carried out with the intention of partly or fully destroying any national, ethnic or racial group. Among these acts are the deliberate creation of such
living conditions for any such group as will lead to its partial or full destruction. In our opinion, what happened in Ukraine was precisely this kind
of action on the part of the Communist government, aimed against Ukrainians.
The next document is the Convention on Removing Statutory Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, which was adopted by
the UN General Assembly on November 26, 1968. This Convention declares that no statutory limitations can be placed on a number of crimes,
regardless of when they took place. According to the 1948 Convention, genocide is among these crimes, even if it was not a violation of domestic
laws of the country where it took place. According to the norms of international law, a law can have a backdated effect when it comes to crimes
against humanity. And the Holodomor of 1932-1933 is undoubtedly such a crime. In short, despite the fact that both Conventions were adopted
later, in the 1940s and 1960s, their effect extends to the crimes of the 1930s. [10, pp 497-502]
Interest in the subject of the Holodomor grew considerably in the West at the beginning of the 1980s. The memoirs of V. Kravchenko, V. Hryshko,
B. Marchenko, and O. Voropai were published. Walter Dushnyk described the genocide and Leo Cooper’s book “Preventing genocide” came
out. The first international conference called “Famine, Genocide, 1933” took place in Montreal in March 1983, after which 10 of the reports
presented at the conference were published in a collection. The Montreal conference was covered in both the anglophone and francophone
media.
In 1984, Y. Luhoviy and S. Novytskiy finished putting together their documentary film called “Harvest of Grief.” However, communists and
sovietophiles protested against the film, as did other opponents of Ukraine’s “bid for” historical truth. In 1987, Canadian author Douglas Toll
published a book entitled, “Deceit, Hunger and Fascism: The Ukrainian myth of genocide from Hitler to Harvard.” The author presented the film
and the desire of Ukrainians to attract the attention of the world by genocide as an ordinary attempt by nazi collaborators to pull the wool over
everyone’s eyes. A few professors of history from Canadian universities joined him in discrediting the film: Clarence, David Wyefel and Lynn
Viola. In 1990, the international conference on the famine was held in Toronto, by which time it was joined by Ukrainian scholars. [14, pp 136-146
]
Unfortunately, this tragedy of global significance continued to not be given the necessary attention in western countries. The few attempts by
researchers to paint an objective picture of events in Ukraine were inevitably accompanied by accusations of twisting and fixing the facts and of
crypto-nazi attitudes. The reason for this appeared to be the hostile reaction of the USSR to information about the famine in the western press,
which they called anti-soviet propaganda and accused the journalists of being in someone’s pay. WWII had turned the USSR from an enemy to
an ally [sic]. The topic of the famine had been moved to the back burner.
Later, accusations against the Stalin regime for the famine for some reason became unacceptable in the West. Once the Cold War began, the
West seemed to think it inappropriate to use this subject in the ideological war with their opponent. Keeping the memory of the Holodomor alive
for many years became the work of the Ukrainian diaspora.
4. The International Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933
In 1984, the World Congress of Free Ukrainians turned to a slew of lawyers and legal scholars from all over the world with a plea to participate in
researching the famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933. They also initiated the setting up of an International Commission to study the famine in
Ukraine. It included world-famous practicing lawyers and scholarly theorists.
The organizational meeting of the Commission took place in Toronto on February 12, 1988l. The main tasks that stood before this non-
government body were to determine: the reality and duration of the famine; the reason or reasons for the famine; the consequences for Ukraine
and its people; and recommendations regarding responsibility for having organized the famine. The Commission’s sources of information were
eye-witness testimony, reports in the western press, diplomatic sources, soviet archives, and scholarly work.
The closing session of the Commission took place in London on November 15-18, 1989. Based on its objectives, the Commission came to a
number of conclusions. There could no longer be any doubt that there was a massive famine in Ukraine. The famine began at the end of
summer in 1932, reached its peak in the spring of 1933 and ended at the beginning of the summer in 1933. It encompassed all the territory
within the political boundaries of Ukraine, as well as the Don and Kuban regions and was clearly directed at those areas where ethnic
Ukrainians were in the majority. The Commission did not find any explanation as to why territories with Russian populations managed to avoid
the famine.
The Commission was also not able to come up with a firm figure as to the number of victims of the famine, but there is no doubt that it was at
least 4.5 million. This is based on the argument that in the USSR as a whole the population grew 15.7% while in Ukraine it contracted. The
immediate reason for the famine was the excessive consignment of grain. In addition, the root of the famine can be sought in the forced
collectivization of farming, in the “de-kurkulization” of the peasants themselves, and in the desire of the central soviet government to cast a blow
against traditional Ukrainian nationalism. All these methods and measures had one goal in mind: to destroy the Ukrainian nation and famine
was the means to this political end.
The famine was man-made, that is, its direct reasons were based in human actions. The central government was well-informed about the state
of affairs in Ukraine, but deliberately held back from any measures that might improve the situation prior to Summer 1933. Meanwhile,
warehouses were overflowing with food products. Propositions for assistance from international NGOs were turned down by the bolsheviks.
The Soviet Government used a variety of legal measures to increase the destructive impact of the famine: the ukase of August 7, 1932, which
forbade taking any produce that was in a storehouse or in the open; the ukases of September 13, 1932 and March 17, 1933, which forbade
villagers to leave their collective farms without the permission of the kolhosp management; and the ukase of December 4, 1932 that forbade
victims of the famine to move from place to place without permission.
In the opinion of the Commission, responsibility for the famine lay with the leadership of the Soviet Union. In terms of the issue whether the
Holodomor of 1932-33 was specifically genocide against the Ukrainian people, the Commission considered two questions: 1) What evidence of
this crime was there in the actions of the government? and 2) What norms can be applied to determine that genocide is going on under cover of
a famine? According to generally accepted notions, three elements are necessary to determine that a series of events qualifies as genocide: the
presence of a specific national, ethnic, racial or religious group; intentions to destroy this particular group in whole or in part; and specific actions
such as killing, physical or psychological damage, deliberate creation of living conditions for the targeted group that are likely to physically
destroy it, measures to prevent new births in the group, and more. When it comes to the famine of 1932-1933, the first and third conditions are
clearly present. It is somewhat harder to prove the existence of the second condition, the intent to destroy the particular group.
At that point, the Commission did not have serious evidence that the famine was really organized by the Soviet Government for the purpose of
carrying out its policies. However, it was very clear to the members of the Commission that the Stalin regime took advantage of the famine that
began to promote its interests. One point of evidence that a national group was being destroyed was the fact that the cities were almost
untouched by the famine. It was directed at the countryside and small settlements, which were ethnically Ukrainian, while the larger cities were
mostly ethnically Russian.
The Commission thus offered its considered opinion that genocide was taking place against ethnic Ukrainians and was in contravention of
international legal norms in effect at the time. The evidence that the Commission presented confirmed that the crime carried out by Soviet
leadership during the famine in 1932-1933 had the all the features of a crime against humanity. However, the members of the Commission
were not unanimous in their conclusions. For instance, Prof. George Levasseur did not agree that what took place qualified as genocide under
the terms of the 1948 Convention, a position that was supported by General Counsel Hunter.
As we can see, the results of the Commission’s work were a kind of summary of the international debates and controversies that surrounded
events in Ukraine in 1932-1933. And although the conclusions of the Commission were not unanimous, the overall outcome was a strong
answer to those who doubted that there had been a famine in Ukraine and for those who did not see anything special in one of the greatest
tragedies of the 20th century. For those who denied the tragedy of Ukrainians, it became an opportunity to make an easy reputation and dirty
money. [9]
Conclusions
The end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s was one of the most terrible periods in the modern history of Ukraine. The Bolshevik party,
in carrying out its policies, became the newest hangman of Ukraine. This policy was aimed at destroying the leading activists in science, culture,
the arts and education. The flower of the Ukrainian nation was persecuted. Still, this was not enough for the Stalin regime. Under the guise of
collecting grain, which supposedly was being hampered by “kurkuls [kulaks]” and “enemies of the people,” the complete confiscation of all food
stores among Ukrainian peasants began in the summer of 1932. The country was doomed to a hungry death.
The cynicism and violence of the bolsheviks knew no limits, while the methods of those in power said only one thing—that the famine was a
deliberate action that had two aims: to take all grain away from the villagers in order to sell it abroad and pay for industrialization, and to destroy
as many Ukrainians as possible and give the freed-up areas over to ethnic Russians. They reached their goal at a terrible cost: more than five
million Ukrainians died as a result of the famine. Not in the deserts of Africa, not in Asia, but on the richest chornozem in the world, in the 20th
century.
This scale of tragedy could not have gone unnoticed in the West. Despite all the efforts the bolsheviks used to prevent information from getting to
the West, European society was informed about what was happening in Ukraine. In this, it was assisted in the main by journalists and
diplomatic staff. The most accurate information about the situation was in the hands of foreign media. Still, by buying off journalists and providing
theatrical “showcases” about the “happy life of Ukrainian villagers,” the bolsheviks were able to ensure that, parallel to reports of the terrible
famine in Ukraine, the western press also had their complete opposite.
There is no doubt that the governments of western countries were also well informed about the Holodomor. But the situation was such that they
put their own political and economic interests above the lives of millions of human victims. Not a single step was taken at the government level to
prevent the tragedy. Either they ignored the famine altogether or they said that intervention was unacceptable.
This position on the part of the West led to a situation where, for the longest time, the matter was not really researched in history, while
unquestionable documented testimony and reports by eye-witnesses were often branded as pro-nazi. Only in the 1980s was there a sudden
rise in interest in the West to the events of half a century earlier. The International Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933
offered a kind of summing up of the few discussions among foreign scholars that had taken place when it published its conclusions in 1990.
Those results confirmed the man-made nature of the famine and its scale, and determined that those responsible for the Holodomor were the
then-leadership of the USSR.
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