(quote) "It is time," the flyer declared, "to acknowledge that the current war in Ukraine is an extension of the genocidal policies of the Russian state. Such policies were a tactic of the USSR and continue to be so as directed by Vladimir Putin, in an effort to extend Russian rule over non-Russian republics of the now defunct Soviet Union."
"It is time," the flyer continued, "to reject Vladimir Putin's claim that Ukrainians and Russians are 'one people' as a precursor to and defense for this War."
"It is time," the flyer concluded, "to teach the Holodomor as genocide in Michigan Public Schools."
I was struck by the photograph the man opted to use to illustrate his flyer - five gaunt boys, clearly starving. Most students of Russian history, however, would recognize the photo as being from the famine of 1920-21, which had nothing to do with the period encompassed by the so-called Holodomor.
Hopefully, that little error would be corrected before finalizing any curriculum.
"The fame of 1932-33," the flyer noted, "is often called the Holodomor, a term derived from the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor)."
What the flyer failed to point out is that the term Holodomor came into being only in the late 1980's, conjured up by Ukrainian nationalists trying to fan the flames of Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union in its final years, in short, a fake word used to define a fake narrative.
The famine that swept through the Soviet Union in 1932-33 was very real - there is no denying this. But it was not an isolated event, but rather part and parcel of the Stalin-driven policy of forced collectivization of agriculture. During the period of forced collectivization between 1930-37, Robert Conquest estimated that some 14.5 million peasants lost their lives; of these, some 5 million were Ukrainians who died during the famine of 1932-33.
These are horrible numbers, reflective of human tragedy and suffering of an unimaginable scale. Robert Conquest's groundbreaking work, The Harvest of Sorrow, has served as one of the primary sources behind the resurgence of Ukrainian nationalism in the late 1980's. Indeed, as Conquest himself concluded, "Stalin... saw the [Ukrainian] peasantry as the bulwark of nationalism; and common sense requires us to see this double blow at Ukrainian nationhood as no coincidence."
But even Conquest had to admit that this conclusion was pure speculation on his part. "As to Stalin's personal guilt," Conquest wrote, "we cannot document the responsibility in the sense of any decree exists in which Stalin orders the famine."
Conquest concluded that, from his standpoint, "the facts are established; the motives are consistent with all that is known of Stalinist attitudes; and the verdict of history cannot be other than one of criminal responsibility."
This is the narrative that the Ukrainian nationalists use to sustain their argument that the Holodomor was a targeted act of genocide carried out by Stalin against the Ukrainian people.
The problem is, the historical record does not support such a conclusion. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Soviet archives were opened to western scholars, who were able for the first time to draw upon primary sources of information to critically examine the Cold War-era historical narrative, such as the one promulgated by Conquest in The Harvest of Sorrow. Conquest's conclusions were found wanting - there simply was no documentary evidence to back up his claims that Stalin was criminally responsible for the targeted starvation of the Ukrainian people in 1932-33.
When confronted by two of these scholars, R. W. Davies and Stephan G. Wheatcroft, Conquest was compelled to agree that his conclusion that Stalin purposefully inflicted the 1932-33 famine was wrong. With the benefit of this new research, Conquest instead argued that Stalin "could have prevented it [the famine] but put 'Soviet interest' other than feeding the starving first - thus consciously abetting it."
No Holodomor, no genocide, but rather a narrative of a society undergoing revolutionary transformations (i.e., forced agricultural collectivization) which its leadership was unable to effectively manage, leading to great human tragedy.
But the forces of modern Ukrainian nationalism needed to manufacture a case for dividing Ukraine into eastern (pro-Russia) and western (anti-Russia) blocs, and in 2006, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a bill which labeled the 1932-33 famine an "act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation," ignoring the reality that both ethnic Russians and Ukrainians died by the millions during the famine, and that there was no documentary evidence that Stalin either orchestrated the famine or used it to target the Ukrainian population.
The bill was backed by then-President Viktor Yushchenko, the same man who, four years later, would pressure the Ukrainian Parliament to pass a bill awarding the title "Hero of Ukraine" to Stepan Bandera.
The reality is that far from representing the historical continuity of a nefarious Russian scheme that has targeted the Ukrainian people for genocidal eradication, the Holodomor "myth" has been used by Ukrainian nationalists to criminalize Russia and, by extension, Russians - and their current leader, Vladimir Putin, all the while extolling the odious ideology of one of history's most vile characters - Stepan Bandera. (/quote) -- Cont'd at https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/the-holodomor-myth