Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor, by Stanislav Kulchytsky. 2018. CIUS Press, Toronto

The Holodomor was Genocide: Murder by Starvation, Not a Targeting of Only Those Resisting Communist Policies

In the Introduction, Bohdan Klid points out that Ukrainian scholars are coming to a genocidal understanding of the Holodomor, as exemplified earlier by western scholars James Mace and Robert Conquest, more and more. (p. xvi). It is remembered on Black Ribbon Day (August 23).

EARLY 1932 and LATE 1932: ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE. DO NOT CONFUSE FAMINE WITH THE HOLODOMOR

Common misunderstandings of the Holodomor occur because the different kinds of genocide (and not only according to ethnicity) are not appreciated, and because different Soviet policies, occurring in the early 1930s, are mistakenly conflated. Klid explains, “Genocide, however, was committed not against Ukrainians targeted because of their ethnicity but against the Ukrainian peasantry. The famine that broke out in 1932 was due to excessive grain requisitions but was transformed in late 1932 by Stalin under the guide of continued grain collection, extending to the confiscation of all feedstuffs, into a ‘terror famine’. Essentially, this was a ‘new famine’. Its purpose was to entrench the collective-farm system, whose imposition had provoked mass resistance, and teach the peasants that they must work conscientiously on the collective farms.” (p. xv).

Kulchytsky elaborates on the changeover in Soviet policies that took place within 1932. He comments, “And the literature on the famine in Ukraine lacks the chronological element: the famine of the first half of 1932 merges with that of the second half of the year, and the latter runs into the famine of the first half of 1933. True, people in Ukraine were dying of a man-made famine caused by the authorities throughout both these years, but scholars need to find the line that divides death by hunger from murder by starvation. In the former case, starvation was an unexpected, and even unwanted, side effect of the authorities’ action. As much as possible, they took measures to save the starving. In the latter case, having already crossed that line, they deliberately organized the famine with the aim of killing a certain number of people.” (p. 50).

THE HOLODOMOR WAS INDISCRIMINATE MASS MURDER

The author adds that, “The fourteenfold difference between the famine of 1932 and the Holodomor in 1933 cannot be explained by grain procurements.” (p. 116). Kulchytsky then reminds us of the unmistakably genocidal nature of the Holodomor, “However, when the state confiscates not grain but any and all food, its intentions should be deemed murderous; there can be no other explanation. We are dealing here with mass murder–planned in advance and well organized–not only of those whom the Kremlin regarded as saboteurs but also of children and the elderly…The fact that stores of food were confiscated by state agencies removes the grounds for opposition to calling the Holodomor a genocide.” (p. 116. Emphasis added).

THE IMPOSED MURDER-BY-STARVATION WAS SYSTEMATIC, LARGE SCALE, AND GEOGRAPHICALLY WIDESPREAD

The author elaborates on the foregoing, “There are hundreds and thousands of documented and published testimonies asserting that the search brigades confiscated not only meat and potatoes, as provide by the legislation about in-kind fines, but all available feedstuffs.” (p. 117). Kulchytsky concludes: “Thus the Kremlin’s intention to annihilate a certain portion of the Ukrainian population has a solid evidentiary basis in the accounts of hundreds and hundreds of people who managed to survive. We also have the objective results of Stalin’s operation: the death by starvation of millions of people in the Ukrainian SSR and the Kuban.” (p. 119).

VICTIMHOOD COMPETITION: ANALYSIS OF THE HOLODOMOR AND THE HOLOCAUST

Consider this question asked by Holocaust supremacists: “Why in 1932-33 were Ukrainians killed only in Soviet Ukraine and the Kuban, whose population wanted to be reunited in Ukraine, and not in Moscow or the Far East?” (p. xx). One could also ask, “Why were the Jews of German-occupied Poland (a global center of Jewish culture) almost wiped out, while the Jews of German-occupied North Africa were almost untouched?”

Now consider another question: “…why were Ukrainians killed only in 1932-1933, and not before or after?” (p. xx). That’s as silly as asking. “Why were the Jews (systematically) killed in 1941-1944, and not during all the other years of the existence of the Third Reich (1933-1941, and 1945)”? [Of course, individual Jews, just like individual Ukrainians, were killed outside these time frames].

Note also that the Holodomor is no less a genocide just because it was done for “rational” purposes (e. g, enforcing collectivization). Pointedly, the Holodomor did not only target those Ukrainians that were anti-Soviet or that resisted collectivization. Within its huge geographic scope of operation, it indiscriminately targeted all Ukrainians, as noted earlier, moreover regardless of age or gender. It was just like the Holocaust, which targeted all Jews, and not only those Jews that had wronged Nazi Germany.

Furthermore, rationality is a matter of opinion. The Holocaust, certainly a genocide, was also done for “rational” purposes. This included the punishing of Jews collectively for the actions of ‘international” Jewry, and for the acquisition of the property of the murdered Jews.

Some of those who deny the Holodomor as genocide claim that there is no written proof of genocidal intent. (p. 116). Kulchytsky notes that, “The Kremlin rulers considered that such nightmarish intentions could not be set down on paper.” (p. 116; See also p. 119). But exactly the same is true of Hitler and the Jews! There is no written order for the Holocaust–evidently for the very same reason.

INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION, OF THE HOLODOMOR AS GENOCIDE, IS LONG OVERDUE. DOUBLE GENOCIDE VALID

Klid concludes, “We want the United Nations to acknowledge the Ukrainian Holodomor as a genocide. This is no mere caprice: it is necessary for the healing of national memory.” (p. xxi).

JEWISH COMPLICITY IN THE HOLODOMOR: THE ROLE OF LAZAR KAGANOWICZ

The author writes, “Lazar Kaganovich (1893-1991). Secretary of the Central Committee of the AUCP(B), 1928-39. In October 1932, he headed an extraordinary grain-procurement commission of the Central Committee of the AUCP(B), which, under the pretext of grain procurement, confiscated all food supplies from the peasants of the North Caucasus, especially the Kuban region, thereby condemning them to death by starvation.” (p. 49).