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November 25, 2005
The Ukrainian genocide
Today, Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko opened an exhibition about the genocide of 1932-33.
Most genocides in history were carried out to eliminate a group of people; Armenians, Jews, Rwandan Tutsis, or Darfur blacks. In contrast, killing people was not the main goal of Ukrainian genocide, but a side effect. The lives of ten million people were considered less important than the policy goals of the communist regime.
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin wanted to abolish private property completely and collectivize agriculture; he also wanted grain to be exported to bring in hard currency to finance his industrialization plans. The Bolsheviks had been able to seize most land in the rest of the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War of 1917-21, but Ukraine was a special case. In Tsarist times, Ukraine's economy had been less feudal, with land in the hands of small farmers, or kulaks, rather than large landholders, as was the case in Russia proper. Thus, their lands didn't simply change hands during the Bolshevik rise to power.
By 1932, Stalin was determined to break the Ukrainian peasantry, and with it the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism which he saw as a threat to his totalitarian rule. He therefore ordered "shock troops" to raid Ukrainian farms and appropriate grain supplies. The farmers were left with neither food to eat nor seed to plant for the next year. To add a dreadful finality, trains and roads leading out of Ukraine were blocked. It was war by deliberate starvation.
Starving to death is one of the most horrible deaths imaginable. The words of one victim speak for themselves:
We have neither bread nor anything else to eat. Dad is completely exhausted from hunger and is lying on the bench, unable to get on his feet. Mother is blind from the hunger and cannot see in the least. So I have to guide her when she has to go outside. Please Uncle, do take me to Kharkiv, because I, too, will die from hunger. Please do take me, please. I'm still young and I want so much to live a while. Here I will surely die, for every one else is dying...
Death and suffering became routine. To see a skeleton-like person drop dead in the middle of the street, to see skeleton-like corpses line roadsides, to see empty, desolate villages and fields was just a part of life.
A visiting American journalist described the horror:
A peasant woman...appeared from a side path. She was dragging a child of three or four years old by the collar of a torn coat, the way one drags a heavy bag-load. The woman pulled the child into the main street. Here she dropped it in the mud.Everybody saw the scene, but no one made a move. My escort explained that he had long since grown accustomed to such sights...The child's little face was bloated and blue. There was foam around the little lips. The little hands and tiny body was swollen. Here was a bundle of human parts, all deathly-sick, yet still held together by the breath of life.
The mother left the child on the road, in the hope that somebody might do something to save it.
To this day, the Russian government has refused to release the NKVD's files on the famine.
Posted by Tyrone at November 25, 2005 05:59 PM
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