Joseph
Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, set in motion events designed
to cause a famine in the Ukraine to destroy the people there
seeking independence from his rule. As a result, an estimated
7,000,000 persons perished in this farming area, known as
the breadbasket of Europe, with the people deprived of the
food they had grown with their own hands.
The
Ukrainian independence movement actually predated the Stalin
era. Ukraine, which measures about the size of France, had
been under the domination of the Imperial Czars of Russia
for 200 years. With the collapse of the Czarist rule in March
1917, it seemed the long-awaited opportunity for independence
had finally arrived. Optimistic Ukrainians declared their
country to be an independent People's Republic and re-established
the ancient capital city of Kiev as the seat of government.
However,
their newfound freedom was short-lived. By the end of 1917,
Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, sought
to reclaim all of the areas formerly controlled by the Czars,
especially the fertile Ukraine. As a result, four years of
chaos and conflict followed in which Ukrainian national troops
fought against Lenin's Red Army, and also against Russia's
White Army (troops still loyal to the Czar) as well as other
invading forces including the Germans and Poles.
By
1921, the battles ended with a Soviet victory while the western
part of the Ukraine was divided-up among Poland, Romania,
and Czechoslovakia. The Soviets immediately began shipping
out huge amounts of grain to feed the hungry people of Moscow
and other big Russian cities. Coincidentally, a drought occurred
in the Ukraine, resulting in widespread starvation and a surge
of popular resentment against Lenin and the Soviets.
To
lessen the deepening resentment, Lenin relaxed his grip on
the country, stopped taking out so much grain, and even encouraged
a free-market exchange of goods. This breath of fresh air
renewed the people's interest in independence and resulted
in a national revival movement celebrating their unique folk
customs, language, poetry, music, arts, and Ukrainian orthodox
religion.
But
when Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin, one of the most ruthless
humans ever to hold power, succeeded him. To Stalin, the burgeoning
national revival movement and continuing loss of Soviet influence
in the Ukraine was completely unacceptable. To crush the people's
free spirit, he began to employ the same methods he had successfully
used within the Soviet Union. Thus, beginning in 1929, over
5,000 Ukrainian scholars, scientists, cultural and religious
leaders were arrested after being falsely accused of plotting
an armed revolt. Those arrested were either shot without a
trial or deported to prison camps in remote areas of Russia.
Stalin
also imposed the Soviet system of land management known as
collectivization. This resulted in the seizure of all privately
owned farmlands and livestock, in a country where 80 percent
of the people were traditional village farmers. Among those
farmers, was a class of people called Kulaks by the Communists.
They were formerly wealthy farmers that had owned 24 or more
acres, or had employed farm workers. Stalin believed any future
insurrection would be led by the Kulaks, thus he proclaimed
a policy aimed at "liquidating the Kulaks as a class."
Declared
"enemies of the people," the Kulaks were left homeless
and without a single possession as everything were taken from
them, even their pots and pans. It was also forbidden by law
for anyone to aid dispossessed Kulak families. Some researchers
estimate that ten million persons were thrown out of their
homes, put on railroad box cars and deported to "special
settlements" in the wilderness of Siberia during this
era, with up to a third of them perishing amid the frigid
living conditions. Men and older boys, along with childless
women and unmarried girls, also became slave-workers in Soviet-run
mines and big industrial projects.
Back
in the Ukraine, once-proud village farmers were by now reduced
to the level of rural factory workers on large collective
farms. Anyone refusing to participate in the compulsory collectivization
system was simply denounced as a Kulak and deported.
A
propaganda campaign was started utilizing eager young Communist
activists who spread out among the country folk attempting
to shore up the people's support for the Soviet regime. However,
their attempts failed. Despite the propaganda, ongoing coercion
and threats, the people continued to resist through acts of
rebellion and outright sabotage. They burned their own homes
rather than surrender them. They took back their property,
tools and farm animals from the collectives, harassed and
even assassinated local Soviet authorities. This ultimately
put them in direct conflict with the power and authority of
Joseph Stalin.
Soviet
troops and secret police were rushed in to put down the rebellion.
They confronted rowdy farmers by firing warning shots above
the their heads. In some cases, however, they fired directly
at the people. Stalin's secret police (GPU, predecessor of
the KGB) also went to work waging a campaign of terror designed
to break the people's will. GPU squads systematically attacked
and killed uncooperative farmers.
But the resistance continued. The people simply refused to
become cogs in the Soviet farm machine and remained stubbornly
determined to return to their pre-Soviet farming lifestyle.
Some refused to work at all, leaving the wheat and oats to
rot in unharvested fields. Once again, they were placing themselves
in conflict with Stalin.
In
Moscow, Stalin responded to their unyielding defiance by dictating
a policy that would deliberately cause mass starvation and
result in the deaths of millions.
By
mid 1932, nearly 75 percent of the farms in the Ukraine had
been forcibly collectivized. On Stalin's orders, mandatory
quotas of foodstuffs to be shipped out to the Soviet Union
were drastically increased in August, October and again in
January 1933, until there was simply no food remaining to
feed the people of the Ukraine.
Much
of the hugely abundant wheat crop harvested by the Ukrainians
that year was dumped on the foreign market to generate cash
to aid Stalin's Five Year Plan for the modernization of the
Soviet Union and also to help finance his massive military
buildup. If the wheat had remained in the Ukraine, it was
estimated to have been enough to feed all of the people there
for up to two years.
Ukrainian
Communists urgently appealed to Moscow for a reduction in
the grain quotas and also asked for emergency food aid. Stalin
responded by denouncing them and rushed in over 100,000 fiercely
loyal Russian soldiers to purge the Ukrainian Communist Party.
The Soviets then sealed off the borders of the Ukraine, preventing
any food from entering, in effect turning the country into
a gigantic concentration camp. Soviet police troops inside
the Ukraine also went house to house seizing any stored up
food, leaving farm families without a morsel. All food was
considered to be the "sacred" property of the State.
Anyone caught stealing State property, even an ear of corn
or stubble of wheat, could be shot or imprisoned for not less
than ten years.
Starvation
quickly ensued throughout the Ukraine, with the most vulnerable,
children and the elderly, first feeling the effects of malnutrition.
The once-smiling young faces of children vanished forever
amid the constant pain of hunger. It gnawed away at their
bellies, which became grossly swollen, while their arms and
legs became like sticks as they slowly starved to death.
Mothers
in the countryside sometimes tossed their emaciated children
onto passing railroad cars traveling toward cities such as
Kiev in the hope someone there would take pity. But in the
cities, children and adults who had already flocked there
from the countryside were dropping dead in the streets, with
their bodies carted away in horse-drawn wagons to be dumped
in mass graves. Occasionally, people lying on the sidewalk
who were thought to be dead, but were actually still alive,
were also carted away and buried.
While
police and Communist Party officials remained quite well fed,
desperate Ukrainians ate leaves off bushes and trees, killed
dogs, cats, frogs, mice and birds then cooked them. Others,
gone mad with hunger, resorted to cannibalism, with parents
sometimes even eating their own children.
Meanwhile,
nearby Soviet-controlled granaries were said to be bursting
at the seams from huge stocks of 'reserve' grain, which had
not yet been shipped out of the Ukraine. In some locations,
grain and potatoes were piled in the open, protected by barbed
wire and armed GPU guards who shot down anyone attempting
to take the food. Farm animals, considered necessary for production,
were allowed to be fed, while the people living among them
had absolutely nothing to eat.
By
the spring of 1933, the height of the famine, an estimated
25,000 persons died every day in the Ukraine. Entire villages
were perishing. In Europe, America and Canada, persons of
Ukrainian descent and others responded to news reports of
the famine by sending in food supplies. But Soviet authorities
halted all food shipments at the border. It was the official
policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of a famine
and thus to refuse any outside assistance. Anyone claiming
that there was in fact a famine was accused of spreading anti-Soviet
propaganda. Inside the Soviet Union, a person could be arrested
for even using the word 'famine' or 'hunger' or 'starvation'
in a sentence.
The
Soviets bolstered their famine denial by duping members of
the foreign press and international celebrities through carefully
staged photo opportunities in the Soviet Union and the Ukraine.
The writer George Bernard Shaw, along with a group of British
socialites, visited the Soviet Union and came away with a
favorable impression, which he disseminated, to the world.
Former French Premier Edouard Herriot was given a five-day
stage-managed tour of the Ukraine, viewing spruced-up streets
in Kiev and inspecting a 'model' collective farm. He also
came away with a favorable impression and even declared there
was indeed no famine.
Back
in Moscow, six British engineers working in the Soviet Union
were arrested and charged with sabotage, espionage and bribery,
and threatened with the death penalty. The sensational show
trial that followed was actually a cynical ruse to deflect
the attention of foreign journalists from the famine. Journalists
were warned they would be shut out of the trial completely
if they wrote news stories about the famine. Most of the foreign
press corp yielded to the Soviet demand and either didn't
cover the famine or wrote stories sympathetic to the official
Soviet propaganda line that it didn't exist. Among those was
Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Walter Duranty of the New
York Times who sent one dispatch stating "...all talk
of famine now is ridiculous."
Outside
the Soviet Union, governments of the West adopted a passive
attitude toward the famine, although most of them had become
aware of the true suffering in the Ukraine through confidential
diplomatic channels. In November 1933, the United States,
under its new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, even chose
to formally recognized Stalin's Communist government and also
negotiated a sweeping new trade agreement. The following year,
the pattern of denial in the West culminated with the admission
of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations.
Stalin's
Five Year Plan for the modernization of the Soviet Union depended
largely on the purchase of massive amounts of manufactured
goods and technology from Western nations. Those nations were
unwilling to disrupt lucrative trade agreements with the Soviet
Union in order to pursue the matter of the famine.
By
the end of 1933, nearly 25 percent of the population of the
Ukraine, including three million children, had perished. The
Kulaks as a class were destroyed and an entire nation of village
farmers had been laid low. With his immediate objectives now
achieved, Stalin allowed food distribution to resume inside
the Ukraine and the famine subsided. However, political persecutions
and further round-ups of 'enemies' continued unchecked in
the years following the famine, interrupted only in June 1941
when Nazi troops stormed into the country. Hitler's troops,
like all previous invaders, arrived in the Ukraine to rob
the breadbasket of Europe and simply replaced one reign of
terror with another.
