Mr. David Miliband
Foreign Secretary
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London SW1 2AH
England |
Dear Mr. Miliband,
Thank you for this opportunity to comment on the work of your Research Analysts of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office regarding Holodomor.
I am a specialist of historical geography of the Soviet Union. My Doctoral dissertation (University of Washington, 1967) was on land tenure and farm holdings before collectivization and touched, in part, on the issue of collectivization and its aftermath. I personally knew the late Alec Nove and had great respect for him as a colleague.
Your Research Analysts suggest that the issue of whether Holodomor should be defined as a genocide is not straightforward for a number of reasons:
1. The United Nations definition of genocide was restricted to the eradication (in whole or in part) of certain groups based on ethnicity or religion, but not on other criteria. It should be remembered that this was done upon the insistence of the Soviet delegation, which knew that a broader definition would definitely qualify Holodomor as a genocide.
2. The action conducted by the Soviet Government in 1932-33 was never stated as one targeting any specific ethnic group, only as an effort related to economic and social development goals of the USSR. One should remember that the Soviets specified that collectivization would be a "class war" that would eliminate the "Kulak as a class", an action that began in earnest in 1930. This declared motivation would appear to support, in the words of Alec Nove, that Stalin "starved to death those whom he believed to be recalcitrant peasants, many of whom were Ukrainians, rather than Ukrainians, many of whom were peasants." Thus, according to your Analysts, by the strict UN definition of genocide, reluctant peasants cannot be included as a valid target group, regardless of whether peasants of one nationality were mass murdered while peasants of another were not punished to the same extent.
Yet there are compelling reasons why holodomor should be treated as genocide conducted by Stalin's regime against Ukrainians:
1. Starvation was intentionally induced to target the rural, ethnically Ukrainian, population. Starvation began in Ukraine in 1932 and reached its apogee in 1933, at a time when the majority of the peasant households were already collectivized, while the reluctant peasants had been disposessed and sent to Siberia or worse. The form of collectives enforced at the time excluded a private plot, a concession that was allowed later for individual survival. Instead, all food was taken away from the households. Collective fields and animals were protected by armed guards, and pilfering was penalized by death. Desperate Ukrainian peasants were forced to sell any valuables for food in government stores or starve. They were forbidden to leave Ukraine (not even to Russia or Belarus within the USSR, as those borders were controlled) to save themselves or their children from starvation. The same controlling was applied in the Kuban region of the North Caucasus of the Russian Federation, where the majority of the population was Ukrainian. Perhaps by coincidence, the killer famine also hit the middle Volga Region of the Russian Federation, where there were large areas with a majority of Ukrainian and German farmers.
While huge losses of life also occurred in Kazakhstan in the course of settling the nomadic Kazakhs, the response to the excesses of collectivization and the deadly results was the provision of food to the starving by the Soviet government. Moreover, the borders of Kazakhstan were not sealed, and many mobile Kazakhs escaped to the Chinese province of Sinkiang.
2. All-out collectivization and then the starvation of Ukrainians coincided with the political repression of outspoken Ukrainian patriots and then of the Ukrainian National Communists. The policy of rooting out "bourgeois nationalists" began in 1930 with show trials in Kharkiv (then the capital of Ukrainian SSR) of the Ukrainian intelligentsiia and the destruction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (arrests of its clergy and the destruction of its churches). The dragnet then percolated downward to include village teachers and priests in the elimination process. The purging of the Communist cadres of the Ukrainian National Communists followed two years later, in 1932-33, after they pleaded the authorities in Moscow to ease up on the food requisitions in Ukraine. Given this scenario one might reverse Alec Nove's corollary that in this instance Stalin destroyed patriotic Ukrainians, many of whom were peasants!
3. Both Lenin and Stalin were obsessed with Ukraine. Lenin, in his article "Tax in Kind" (1921) deemed it essential to retain the resource-rich "South" at any cost.
Stalin, concerned about the growing Ukrainian National Communists in 1932, ordered his henchmen, Molotov and Kaganovich, who were placed in charge of grain requisitions in Ukraine, that "we must do everything not to lose Ukraine." Clearly, special measures were warranted in the case of Ukraine, including mass starvation in the Ukrainian villages, which were perceived by Stalin as the incubators of Ukrainian nationalism.
On the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, Russia and Ukraine have reached a crescendo of war of words. The Ukrainian government, led by President Yushchenko and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, adamantly insist on the international recognition of Holodomor as genocide directed by Stalin (not Russia or the Russian people) against the Ukrainian people. They view this as a cornerstone of retrieving Ukrainian history that has been concealed for far too long. To facilitate research in this former taboo subject, they have opened the archives in Ukraine, particularly those of the former KGB, to public access. The Russian government, led by President / Prime Minister Putin, deny that Holodomor was a genocide, or that the famine was directed against the Ukrainians. It claims, wrongly, that an unprecedented drought contributed to the calamity and that all nationalities suffered equally. The former KGB files in the Russian Federation continue to be out of reach of the public. Clearly, it fears the implication that Russia, as a successor to the former USSR, might be seen liable for the Holodomor.
Given Russia's adamant resistance to Ukraine's position, taking a stand on Holodomor is tantamount of taking sides between Russia and Ukraine.
Will Her Majesty's Government be afraid to offend the more powerful Russia and not take a stand on the basis of what in fact transpired, or will it have the courage to call a spade a spade?
Respectfully,
Ihor Stebelsky
Professor Emeritus
Political Science
University of Windsor
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