Ukraine genocide

But as Ukraine has been preparing to mark the 80th anniversary of the Holodomor on November 23

we would eat weeds and crushed straw

There was no flour. We dried herbs and plants and pounded them in a mortar, and then Mama would make these matorzhenyki.

It began even before 1933," he said. "One day, someone would go to a neighbor to ask for salt...and the next day they'd already be saying that someone in that family ate somebody else, that they killed a younger child in order to feed the older ones."

He told my mother to take care of the children, because he wasn't going to make it," Rozhko says, running a hand through his snowy white hair. "My hair turned grey immediately after that, even though I was 11. But the words of my father gave me strength. I could hardly drag my legs, but I began to walk everywhere. I would walk for 60 kilometers, just to find something for us to eat."

resulting in their possession of 1,500,000 tons of grain in state reserves.

Every dog and cat had been eaten.

a village that was practically extinct by    starvation.

As 7 to 10 million men, women, and children alike perished from starvation, the world kept silent.

he Soviet Union pitched itself in opposition to the racism of Nazi Germany, and even America. There's a Stalin-era film, which I'm dying to see, in which the American heroine gives birth to a black child and finds peace in the Soviet Union. But it is hard not to look at Ukraine, or look at dekulakization, or look at the Polish operation, or the Latvian operation, and not see--if not racism--a lethal ethnic bias. I've yet to see the argument that Poles were inferior by blood, but I

The Jewish officers who brought the Polish operation to Ukraine and

she spreads wax shavings on a pan to keep the patty from sticking and burning, and places it in an oven.

Whatever the actual figure, it is a trauma that has left a deep and lasting wound among this nation of 45 million.

"They thought today that person died, and tomorrow it will be me. Everyone just thought of death."

The officials' intentions were clear. To me it's a genocide. I have no doubt."

Ukraine was the last place one would have expected famine, for it had been known for centuries as the "breadbasket of Europe."

In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Ukraine became part of a bloody battlefield of fighting between the Bolsheviks

Despite a communist push for collectivization, Ukraine's farms had mostly remained private — t

The Ukrainian Language Institute, Ukrainian Institute of Philosophy, Ukrainian State Publishing House, and countless other institutions were purged, their leaders murdered or imprisoned. So fanatical was the war on nationalism that even the colorful embroidered national costumes Ukrainians wore were seized. Eyewitness Yefrosyniya Poplavets recalls: "To save our

Primary Issues The most vehemently contested aspects of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 are: The intentions behind the Soviet government’s initiation of agricultural collectivization in the Ukrainian territory, building up right before the Famine.   The natural causes of the Famine versus state-controlled causes   The definition of the Ukrainian Famine as an act of genocide

Naimark states his intention to define Stalin’s actions in the 1930’s as genocide. A considerable part of his argument is devoted to the Ukrainian famine. Naimark, however, argues that looking at singular events such as the Holodomor, “while leaving out others, tends to gloss over the genocidal character of the Soviet Regime, which killed systematically rather than episodically.

Particular emphasis is placed on definitions given to genocide by various authorities, and how instances and periods such as the Ukrainian Famine fit into the wider frame of Soviet genocide. Naimark concludes at the end of his chapter exclusively on the Holodomor that it must be considered genocide

Survivor Olena Goncharuk felt the terror: “We were afraid to go out in the village, because people were starving and they hunted children.

My neighbour had a daughter, who disappeared. We went to her house. The head was separated from the body, and the body was cooking in the oven

in Kazakhstan and in Russia. In addition, the Holocaust was a campaign whose intention was to exterminate a people while the Holodomor was not conceived to eradicate the Ukrainian people, even though there were undeniably millions of victims. It was the result of a brutal, inhumane policy led by Stalin, who didn’t care how many died because of him.

Stalin’s forces in 1932-33 requisitioned food stores, deported peasants or forbade them from leaving the land, carried out mass executions and put people in prison.

Then more millions were killed in World War Two. It was only many years later that light could be shed on the Holodomor. After independence in 1991, a law in Ukraine made it a criminal offence to deny that the Holodomor was pre-meditated genocide.

André Liebich: “It is in fact a poorly chosen term. When we think ‘genocide’, and certainly in the context of the 1930s, we think foremost of the Holocaust. The difference is that the Holodomor did not only affect the Ukrainian people but also other peoples within Ukraine and outside it:

“Ukrainian farmers didn’t want to join collective farms, they didn’t want to give the Bolsheviks their produce. That’s why the Bolsheviks killed them with famine.”

But his first intention wasn’t to eliminate the Ukrainians but rather to realise his programme, whatever the cost, even if it meant millions of peasant victims especially – peasants who often were Ukrainians.

Liebich: “There is, effectively, an overstating of the number of victims which doesn’t help anyone. The lowest we can give for the Holodomor is 2,000,000. If we add those who died of illness, of famine-induced weakness, add the birth deficit, we get a figure of several million – but we don’t get the 10,000,000 that we sometimes hear, and maybe not even the 6,000,000 that is the standard figure for the Holocaust, to which some seek to compare the Holodomor.”

1922 The Soviet Union is formed with Ukraine becoming one of the republics.

Stalin introduces a program of agricultural collectivization that forces farmers to give up their private land, equipment and livestock, and join state owned, factory-like collective farms

Many Ukrainian farmers, known for their independence, still refuse to join the collective farms, which they regarded as similar to returning to the serfdom of earlier centuries.

ian farmers, known for their independence, still refuse to join the collective fa

1.5 million Ukrainians fall victim to Stalin's "dekulakization" policies, Over the extended period of collectivization, armed dekulakization brigades forcibly confiscate land, livestock and other property, and evict entire families. Close to half a million individuals in Ukraine are dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped to remote, uninhabited areas such as Siberia where they are left, often without food or shelter. A great many, especially children, die in transit or soon thereafter.

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Holodomor: approximate pronunciation: 'huh-luh-duh-