CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS
This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of history's most horrifying cases of genocide - the Soviet-made Great Famine of 1932-33, in which some 7 million Ukrainians perished.
Relying on news from Svoboda and, later, The Ukrainian Weekly (which began publication in October 1933), this column hopes to remind and inform Americans and Canadians of this terrible crime against humanity.
By bringing other events worldwide into the picture as well, the column hopes to give a perspective on the state of the world in the years of Ukraine's Great Famine.
PART XVI
February 13-28, 1933
On February 13, 1933, Svoboda received news from Moscow headlined "Ukraine Has No Grain to Plant This Spring." The story began: "Always favorable to the Soviet Union, The New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty reported that the Bolsheviks will not be able to conduct their spring planting this year. The reason for this is because there is no grain."
Svoboda reported that even Duranty believed this was because the peasants had eaten the grain they were to plant. However, Svoboda also reported that Duranty could not understand why the Soviet Union could not redistribute the seeds, giving Ukraine and the Kuban region grain from other parts of the Soviet Union. Duranty reasoned that this was because the Soviets were disorganized.
On February 14, the news from Moscow was that Stalin had begun a new campaign of repression against the Ukrainian peasants. He forced all the peasants to join either the state or collective farms. To enforce this, Stalin sent one of his secretaries, Paul Postyshev, to assume the post of second secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party. The first result of Postyshev's arrival was the public admission by the Central Committee that the Ukrainian SSR Communist Party leadership was to blame for the breakdown of agriculture in Ukraine.
On February 16, Svoboda reported that the Soviets had formed several commissions to guard the grain in Ukraine. The commissions had the right to dictatorially force the peasants to follow government orders.
A conference of brigade supervisors was scheduled to take place in Moscow, in order to plan a new strategy for the spring planting. According to the supervisors from the Caucasus region, the peasants of that area would be lucky to fulfill 35 to 40 percent of the plan. In regions of the Kuban and Ukraine, the field work had been only .8 percent completed in February.
On February 20, Svoboda once again reported that Moscow was scheming about ways to repress not only the Ukrainians in Ukraine but the Kozaks of the Kuban region as well. News from Berlin said that the peasants had tried to rebel against Moscow and each time they tried they were more harshly persecuted by the Soviets. The peasants being shipped out of Ukrainian and Kuban lands were replaced by "the hopeful Communist element from central Russia."
On February 27, news from Bucharest once again appeared on the pages of Svoboda. News, reminiscent of 1932, reported that desperate people again tried to cross the Dnister River to the Bessarabian shore. Many people were fatally shot by the Soviet guards, but the ones who made it over spoke of the terror and the famine in the towns and villages throughout Ukraine.
On the last day of February, news from Moscow reached Svoboda which stated that Stalin's newest decree called for the Kuban region and Ukraine to borrow grain from state reserves for the spring planting. According to reports, Ukraine was scheduled to borrow 350,000 tons and Kuban, 263,000 tons. The loan was to be eventually paid back at 10 percent interest contributed toward administrative costs. Any peasant causing trouble and hindering the planting would be exiled to Siberia, according to reports from Moscow. The Soviets continued to relocate Ukrainians, especially those who came from bourgeois families, and those who engaged in counterrevolutionary activities.
During the month of February, besides the news items Svoboda carried, the newspaper also had two commentaries written by O. Snovyda.
The first article, titled "The Capitulation of Stalin," summarized and commented on Stalin's speech to the Communist Central Committee conference held in January. According to Mr. Snovyda, Stalin stated that the "tempo of the development of industry will be reset at a slower pace as will the tempo of collectivization." To Mr. Snovyda this meant that Stalin was admitting the defeat of his plan. Mr. Snovyda remarked that Stalin had a two-part plan for 1933: to assign supervisors to all tractor stations (to ensure the success of spring planting) and to relocate the town and city dwellers in either villages or hard-labor camps in Siberia.
The second article written by Mr. Snovyda, titled "Hitler, Stalin and Ukraine," commented on Stalin's concern with Hitler coming into power in Germany. Mr. Snovyda stated that the Soviet Union had once again been sent into a panic. Mr. Snovyda wondered what the Soviet Union would do next. "They have already squeezed out everything they can from Ukraine. Now they send Postyshev to Ukraine. His predecessors crucified Ukraine, he is now going to finish the job with the widows and children," Mr. Snovyda wrote. The only hope that Mr. Snovyda expressed was that the Soviets were afraid of too much peasant rebellion, for it could stir up international attention.
* * *
Around the world:
The League of Nations Assembly recommended that all states should withhold recognition of the new Manchukuo. Japan refused this recommendation, and when it was confronted with unanimous insistence, it resigned from the League of Nations.
The Rev. Dr. Edmund Walsh, vice-president of Georgetown University, spoke out against United States recognition of the Soviet Union. He called the Soviet government that was in power at that time "the most brutal, most anti-social, anti-Christian, anti-American government in the world."
Mykola Sadovsky, Ukrainian actor and founder of the first Ukrainian theater, died in Kiev at the age of 76.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 5, 1983, No. 23, Vol. LI
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