FACTS ABOUT THE GREAT FAMINE OF 1930S AND THE MYTH OF HOLODOMOR

Year after year, Ukraine and some other countries driven by political bias or other considerations are trying to distort facts of history and spread false narrative about the mass famine in the USSR in the 1930s, alleging that Ukrainians were the ones who solely experienced hunger artificially unleashed by the Bolsheviks. But now that the archives are more available revealing the historical truth of the tragic events of the past, we all (including in Kiev and Ottawa) know the real picture.

In 2010, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) following the example of the 34th UNESCO General Conference in 2007, rejected the Ukrainian concept of “Holodomor as the genocide of Ukrainians” as false and anti-scientific. In its groundbreaking Resolution 1723 PACE recognized that “millions of people in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine lost their lives as a result of mass starvation”. 8 million to be exact.

According to the Resolution, “in Ukraine, which suffered the most, the peasantry was particularly hit by the Great Famine”. No one objects that. However, the overwhelming majority of those victims were ethnic Russians since the famine affected predominantly Russian-populated regions in the East and the South (Kharkov, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa). As for the Western Ukraine that also suffered from starvation, those territories were a part of Poland then. So, mass hunger physically could not be Bolsheviks’-masterminded there.

Then, in Kazakhstan “the ratio of the dead to the whole population is believed to be the highest among all peoples of the former Soviet Union”. And, “hundreds of thousands of farmers also died in Belarus and the Republic of Moldova”.

Moreover, “the population of Russia had the heaviest death toll” since “in the grain-producing areas of Russia (the Middle and Lower Volga, the North Caucasus, the Central Black Soil region, the Southern Urals, Western Siberia and some other regions), the famine […] took millions of lives in rural and urban areas”.

In conclusion, the Assembly honoured “the memory of all those who perished in this unprecedented human disaster” and encouraged the authorities of all countries of the former Soviet Union which suffered during the Great Famine, “to agree on joint activities aimed at commemorating the victims of the Great Famine, regardless of their nationality”.

The resolution mentioned is an easily accessible document for the general public. But those avid for the truth may find much more on the subject.

For many years, Moscow has proposed to commemorate the victims of the Great Famine together in Russia-Kazakhstan-Ukraine format. But Kiev has been stubbornly refusing to do so pretending to have the sole right of ownership of this tragedy. Such privatization is immoral and sacrilegious to the memory of millions of other victims. Even more, Kiev – in order to instigate hate for Russia – cynically exploits Holodomor narrative – that Russians purposefully were strangling Ukrainian identity with famine.

The archives reveal that this is the result of a continuous intentional effort at distorting reality. In the 1930s, the issue of the Great Famine quickly became a tool of Western propaganda against the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany and Poland with Ukrainian nationalists living there and elsewhere invented the myth of atrocious actions by Moscow to exterminate Ukrainian people. The “Ukrainian issue” was used as a means of subversion against the USSR, as well as to leave the Soviet Union behind in competition for the global grain market. But, as the food situation normalized, the issue faded away.

After the World War II, this same narrative was picked up, revived and spinned by the USA. During the Cold War, it was an instrument to foment strife among peoples of the Soviet Union, and reached its propagandistic height in the 1980s with the concept of Holodomor actively disseminated by the Ukrainian community in North America as a “mainstream interpretation”.

It’s a shame the consecutive governments in Canada have chosen to believe in this disinformation not bothering to check the facts or consult serious researchers. More than that, by blindly supporting this narrative fed by the ultra-nationalist part of Ukrainian diaspora, Ottawa also facilitates in further spreading anti-historical lies, to name it bluntly. It is inhumane and insulting to the memory of all victims of the 1930s Famine.