EDITORIAL: Famine denial (07/14/02)

EDITORIAL

Famine denial

It may seem incredible, but it's true: denial of the Great Famine of 1932-1933, which took the lives of up to 10 million people in Ukraine and ethnographically Ukrainian areas, continues to exist.

Most recently, beginning in April and continuing into this month, it was manifested on the Internet on a scholars' discussion list after one participant mentioned a new primary source about what she referred to as the "genocidal Holodomor" (the Ukrainian word for death from hunger) and posed a question to colleagues about other sources of information. One colleague responded that the "Ukrainian Famine" [his quotes] was not limited to Ukraine, was neither man-made nor artificial, and was not genocide.

Unfortunately, neither these types of statements questioning the facts about the Famine - from its very occurrence to its targets, its intentionality or its severity - nor the players who make them are new. In fact, they are disconcertingly familiar. For example, Mark Tauger of West Virginia University and Grover Furr of Montclair State University, have made their opinions well-known on prior occasions.

What is most troubling is that this famine denial rages on, despite decades of work to enlighten the public, governments, scholars, etc. Furthermore, it is distressing to see that, as the Great Famine's 70th anniversary is upon us, there are those who - in the face of new information from post-Soviet and newly independent Ukraine, scholarly publications by such notables as Dr. Robert Conquest, the findings of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, and the reports of various expert inquiries and scholarly conferences worldwide - continue to vehemently practice famine denial.

Prof. Tauger, writing in response to an article by Dr. Taras Kuzio that was disseminated by RFE/RL and was published in this newspaper last week (that article commented on Prof. Tauger's comments to the Internet discussion group), states: "The evidence that I have published and other evidence, including recent Ukrainian document collections, show that the famine developed out of a shortage and pervaded the Soviet Union, and that the regime organized a massive program of rationing and relief in towns and in villages, including in Ukraine, but simply did not have enough food. This is why the Soviet famine, an immense crisis and tragedy of the Soviet economy, was not in the same category as the Nazis' mass murders, which had no agricultural or other economic basis. This evidence also explains why it is false to describe me and other Western scholars as 'deniers' of the famine. There is nothing 'immoral' or 'absurd' about this evidence which comes directly from Ukrainians and other villagers at the time, and it is in no way comparable to a denial of the Holocaust."

Dr. James Mace, who served as staff director of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, replied to Prof. Tauger's article: "The issue is precisely one of Holocaust denial. Change the people, the place, and the time, but the issue remains the same: millions of people dead for political ends." (See Dr. David Marples' analysis on page 2 of this issue for another reaction to Prof. Tauger's position.)

Perhaps the most succinct response to the discussion group came from Prof. Elizabeth Haigh of St. Mary's University : "To deny the genocide of Jews quite rightly brings opprobrium. Surely to deny the Terror-Famine of 1932-1933 ought to provoke the same response."

Surely it is time for famine deniers to cease their repulsive activity in the face of irrefutable evidence about the causes and consequences of the Great Famine, a political famine planned and executed by the Soviet regime - one of the most grisly episodes of genocide the world has ever known.

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