Today's global economic crisis may not compare to the devastating famine of the 1930s but even a ghostly reminder of those days is evidence of the havoc that disasters can reap on international relations. Just like the last Saturday of every November. Although this day does not carry any special meaning for most people around the world, it has a distinct significance for Ukrainians. It is marked as a day of remembrance for the victims who died in the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine. The terror famine. Or in other words: the Holodomor.
What set the last Saturday of November in 2008 apart from past years is that the Kiev administration filed a formal complaint against Russia for the terror famine. The pro-western administration of President Viktor Yushchenko is trying to fend off problems stemming from Ukraine's bid for NATO membership, public unrest over the gas crisis with Russia and domestic political turmoil by raising the issue of the Holodomor. Russian President Medvedev is accusing Ukraine for politicizing the famine as a tool against Russia. Despite Ukrainian efforts, the United Nations General Assembly refused to include discussions on Ukraine's 1932-1933 famine, which Kiev wants recognized as an act of genocide, in the agenda of the UN session, forcing Ukraine to accuse the UN for defending Russia's stance. Despite this, Ukraine, the European Union, the United States, Argentine, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Spain, Italy, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Moldova, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Vatican and various states in many countries recognize the Holodomor as genocide.
However, even EU representatives realize that Kiev has no other leverage or means of political pressure against Russia other than the Holodomor. Despite Yushchenko's hopes for backing and recognition from international organizations, certain facts illuminate across history to today.
According to American historians Mark Tauger and John Paul Himka, there was no ethno-nationalist motivation behind the Holodomor. Stalin himself was Georgian and the famine equally affected the kolkhozy in Ukraine, Ukraine SSR and even the Povoljye region of Russia.
Yushchenko's efforts to promote the issue to the international level show in part that he is trying to strengthen his position within the national minorities in west Ukraine. However, Yushchenko's Ukraine has far more serious problems; and Kiev has to take much needed steps and face difficult decisions to solve its pestering domestic problems. Although the political crisis seems to have burned out, there are signs that the fire continues on the inside. According to Ukrainian statistics, 78% of the population lives in poverty. This is not just Ukraine's problem limited to the national level, it could trigger a potentially explosive social upheaval at Europe's doorstop. Accusations towards Russia on the terror famine increasingly poison fragile Kiev-Moscow relations. Europeans have not fully recovered from the last round of the Russia-Ukrainian gas crisis, and they do not want wake up to another cold morning. Yushchenko's bid to use the Holodomor as leverage against Russia comes at a time when Europe relies heavily on Russian gas exports, putting Brussels in an uncomfortable position. In any case, advocates of the allegations in the past are responsible for today's harsh polarization.
Until 1988, the West, and especially the U.S., had not taken any formal steps to recognize the allegations. For one they did not have proof, bur more influential on their reluctance was that they knew the USSR backlash would be harsh. During the administration of nomenclature's last representatives Mikhail Gorbachev and Alexander Yakovlev, the U.S. Congress made the decision to hold Moscow responsible for genocide. At that point, they knew that the weakened Soviet administration could do nothing to oppose.
The background of the allegations is riddled with a web of complex relationships. William Randolph Hearst, the American media mogul known as the father of the so-called 'yellow press', i.e., the sensationalist press, was also an anti-communist and claimed by some to be a Nazi supporter. In February 1935, a series of articles were widely published in the Hearst newspapers, mostly in the Journal in New York, and the Chicago American, condemning the Soviet regime's deliberate attempts to starve 6 million Ukrainians to death. At the time, it was strongly believed that it was Hitler who encouraged Hearst to disseminate these ideas and provided materials for publication. Following the headlines, William Walker, a reporter, claiming to have travelled to Ukraine published a series of photographs of starving Ukrainian villagers. However, in an article entitled "Hearst's Russian Famine" published on March 13th, 1935 in the The Nation, Louis Fisher called Walker an "absentee journalist" stressing that he had serious doubts about the authenticity of the photographs. Fisher went on to say that the "... photographs could easily date back to the Volga famine in 1921. Many of them might have been taken outside of the Soviet Union. They were taken at different seasons of the year: anybody can see that by looking at the vegetation and the clothes of the people. One picture includes trees or shrubs with large leaves. Such leaves could not have grown by the "late spring" of Mr. Walker's alleged visit.." In July 1935, it was understood that William Walker was a fugitive named Robert Green. Green was arrested and he confessed to not having taken the photographs.
It was obvious that the U.S. did not need the vast plains of Ukraine in those years. However, they were needed for Nazi Germany's "Lebensraum" and Ukraine's fertile lands were ideal. Accusing the communist regime in Ukraine for massacre on international platforms was a significant legitimacy tool at that time, and following World War II, Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, who immigrated to Canada and the U.S., spread much of these accusations. Communists were condemned in much the same way as Hitler was for what he did to Jews in the middle of civilized Europe. At the time, Ukrainian nationalists claimed that Politburo officials like Jewish Lazar Kaganovich massacred people because of their Ukrainian nationality. Interestingly, part of these accusations was that the casualties in Ukraine amounted to nearly 6 million, which is the same number of Jews massacred by the Nazis.
How could the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFRS) delegates have known in December 28, 1922, when they decided to include Ukrainian SSR to the Soviet Union that after 86 years the two sides would vehemently oppose each other over claims of genocide?
Now Russia could freely sow the seed of its revolution in the vast plains of Ukraine. But with the harvest came change in the overall landscape of relations. In the path towards creating the new man, collectivization of agriculture would be the boldest step. Wealthy villagers recognizing that collectivization would mean the end of their privileged status, voiced harshly opposition to the Soviet Union's program to end the mechanisms of production based on private property and the gathering of villagers in kolkhoz and sovkhoz. Eventually, protest to Soviet practice resulted in a collapse of production. The result was famine and the deadly spread of famine related diseases. The Soviet administration took the decision to lower the proportion of collected grain as the death toll rose. In the 1930s, the prevention and treatment of epidemic diseases were severely limited, and Penicillin was not invented until the late 1940s. Millions of people are reported to have died in the U.S. and Europe because of epidemic diseases until Penicillin was available.
At the beginning, the Bolsheviks turned a blind eye on private farms established on fertile lands. However, with time this production type increasingly posed a threat to the command economy. Furthermore, during the Russian civil war, villagers had lent less support to the revolutionaries than the urban population. Moscow had thought that rural areas could easily be integrated to the system through collectivization. Following the 1930s, the government mobilized thousands of officials for the implementation of agricultural collectivism in rural areas. The response by wealthy land owners was to cut off production. The 1932 harvest was an omen of what lay ahead. The adamant and unyielding stand of the farm owners enabled the massacre of the masses. Farm owners slaughtered their livestock as a means of confiscating them from the government, which meant there were not enough animals to plow the fields. The situation was made worse with the poor weather conditions, and disaster fell upon the people a year later. Most of the fertile lands of Ukraine became lands of famine. Stalin personally appointed Pavel Postishev as Second Secretary of Ukraine, consolidating his full control over Ukraine.
Relatively good weather conditions in 1934 spring yielded a good harvest despite ineffective farming and the decrease in the work force during 1932-33.
At this point we need to look at the background of collectivism. The country where socialism was first applied was under the threat of war. It was impossible to acquire financial aid from outside. It had to industrialize with its own resources and needed foreign currency for establishing its industry because various materials had to be purchased from outside. In those years, grain was the only source of foreign currency for the USSR, but it did not have industrial products that it could offer to villagers as incentive. Soviet villagers did not want to produce more than they needed. In an effort to break the debilitating cycle the Politburo started to gather villagers in kolkhoz and sovkhozes. The period between 1932-33, when the terror-famine was at its height, were the times that the struggle between rich landlords opposing Soviet policies to collectivize agriculture and the Soviet regime climaxed. Draught worsened the situation. What makes this episode strange is that the deaths happened in the most fertile lands of the SSR, Ukraine.
Some villagers in Ukraine slaughtered their oxen, and set their horses free in some areas to prevent the government from taking them. The cultivation capacity was cut back a considerable amount. According to Stalin's report delivered at the 17th Party Congress on January 26, 1934, there were 26.2 million horses and 47.9 million cattle in whole USSR by 1931 but in 1932 this number decreased to 19.6 million horses and 40.7 million cattle.
Ukrainian nationalists claim that Stalin was responsible for the famine genocide. Some even resort to emotional arguments saying that Stalin did not like the Ukrainians. But when objectively examined Russia and Ukraine were the two powerhouses of the SSR. Furthermore, the Soviet regime built various heavy industries in Ukraine. The USSR's largest hydroelectric power plant ,Dnepro-GES, which was operational by 1932; the Kharkov tractor factory; and the huge metallurgy complex Krivorojstal, which started production in 1934, are some of the examples. An interesting coincidence; former Ukrainian President Kuchma, who also recognized the genocide claims, sold Krivorojtal in 2004 to a group, a part of which is owned by his son-in-law. What an irony.
Ukrainian historians, just like their politicians, are divided on the issue. While those close to the government support official policy, others, like the Director of Ukrainian Science Academy Archeology Institute historian Petro Tolochko reject the genocide claims. During an interview with the Russian Izvestiya Tolochiko asserted that "we will not permit destruction of our common history at the hands of Yushchenko".
Another noteworthy issue is the famine and the related deaths that occurred in the U.S. around the same years. During 1932-33, the SSR was not alone in experiencing famine related with economic crisis. The real effect of the 1929 depression began to be felt in the U.S. in those year, hitting both urban and rural areas. Farmers were unable to sell their products; people in cities unable to buy food and excess food that could not be sold was being destroyed in line with market rules.
According to Russian historian Boris Borisov nearly one million American farmers were affected by the Wall Street crash, losing their land and unable to pay their debts. President Roosevelt's Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes channeled the unemployed labor force, gathered under state institutions like the Public Works Administration and Civil Works Administration, to work on the construction of canals, roads and bridges. A considerable number of people, who were earning five dollars a month and struggling against malaria, died in this process. According to Borisov's research which relies on American population records (Statistical Abstract of the United States), there was a decrease of nearly seven million in those years and there were some serious allegations that five million people were victims of famine and unemployment. But research on this issue is extremely limited and records dating back to that period were not well-kept. Still, Borisov's research offers a perspective on some of the social dimensions of the politicized debate and merits a closer look.
Ukraine's accusation against Russia for committing genocide could open Pandora's box. Such a step will likely hurt Ukraine. This would not be the first. Former member of the SSR, Armenia, which accuses the forefathers of Turkey for genocide, has suffered the implications of this allegation for years. Despite the convergence between the claims of the fanatical Diaspora and those who would like to gain an upper hand against Turkey at the negotiation table, this has not produced anything but the isolation of Armenia.
The accusations of Armenia and the Diaspora are one sided, they always have been. On January 18, 1919, British High Commissioner Admiral Calthrope arrested 120 people accused of massacre, in the then occupied Ottoman Empire. These people were sent to the island of Malta and brought to stand trial in court. On July 29, 1921, the British General Attorney declared the verdict of acquittal. Furthermore, the U.S. also declared that there was no substantial evidence proving genocide at the trial (the U.S. had sent observers to the region). Armenians diligently evade bringing the issue to the legal domain.
The Lower house of Russian Parliament DUMA, on the other hand, passed the decree that claims Turkey subjected Armenians to genocide. As the irony of history has it, Ukraine accuses Russia of committing genocide for the famine in 1932-33. Corrupting historical events for the sake of gaining the upper hand in the international power struggle is destructive and comes at a high cost. Unless events are viewed through the objective lens of history and law, lasting solutions are simply out of reach. Such calculations have not and will not contribute in transformative ways to the course of bilateral or multilateral relations. Unfortunately, the struggles played out by these rules can only harvest poison ivy.