Russia has issued the first of three volumes of documents on the Soviet Union’s catastrophic famine of the early 1930s. Russian officials claim the widespread starvation was the result misguided Kremlin policies, but in Ukraine the famine is considered an act of genocide (the Holodomor or death by starvation).
The scholars’ conclusion is consistent with the Kremlin’s position the famine was not limited to Ukraine and that its victims, mostly peasants and landowners, were targeted not because of their nationality, but rather their social class.
The United Nations defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. There is no mention of class.
Historians say Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the confiscation of grain in fertile regions of Russia, Kazakhstan, the northern Caucasus and Ukraine not only to break widespread opposition to collectivization, but also to increase grain exports to buy weapons and fund industrialization. Russian historian Viktor Kondrashyn says famine was the result of misguided policies.
Ukraine’s National Memory Institute deputy director, historian Vladyslav Verstiuk, categorically rejects Kondrashyn’s claims. He points to a message Stalin delivered in January 1933, in which the dictator issued a threat specifically to Ukrainian peasants, “give us your grain, or you will be punished.”
In Ukraine, the famine is known as the Holodomor or death by starvation, and is considered an act of genocide.