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 XXXII
November 16-30, 1933
The news in Svoboda on November 16 was that, although protests against the famine in western Ukraine were banned by the Polish government, October 29, the Day of National Mourning, witnessed thousands of people attending church memorial services, fasting the entire day and attending closed-door meetings to discuss the conditions in Soviet Ukraine.
Across the top of the front page, a banner read: "Let Us Protest Against the Starving of Ukrainians by the Soviets." That day, Svoboda also carried the final report in a series written by a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. Excerpts, from the English-language report, follow.
Writing about Bila Tserkva, the correspondent said:
"This little provincial town, which, like all towns in the former Pale of Settlement, has a notably large proportion of Jews in its population, lies two or three hours' ride southwest of Kiev, depending on the speed of one's train. The first fact that strikes the newly arrived traveler is the demand of the local hotel that one shall take a bath and pass through a process of disinfection. Without these preliminaries no one is admitted to the hotel or allowed to buy a railway ticket at the local station. This quite excellent sanitary measure is a significant indication that the dreaded spotted typhus, while it has not assumed epidemic proportions at the present moment, is far from completely stamped out.
"While there is better discipline and more will to work among the peasants than last year, I did not get the impression that their mood in the main, was one of enthusiasm. The intensive labor in the hungry spring had rather been an effort at elementary self-preservation. The present attitude is rather one of watchful waiting. If there is now a steady upward turn in the curve of their material welfare, if they can get not only bread, their first requirement, but also meat and fats, if the stream of city goods into the villages broadens, it is reasonable to expect that collective farming will command more wholehearted support.
"As for the question of hunger, no honest and open-eyed observer in those villages which I personally visited would either assert that there is hunger now or deny that there had been hunger, and a good deal of it in the early months of the year, especially in April and May. With hunger, of course, went lowered resistance of disease; and this appreciably swelled the casualties. How far the conditions of Kropotkin, Poltava, and Bila Tserkva were typical can only be a matter of conjecture. It can be definitely stated that no provinces within a radius of several hundred miles of Moscow experienced the Ukrainian and north Caucasian extremities. On the other hand there does seem to have been food shortage in districts of the Lower Volga and of remote Kazakhstan."
He ended his report by saying:
"One cannot be in the Russian and Ukrainian countryside today without feeling at once an element of dramatic change and transformation and a sense of tragedy. If one feels optimistic and sees a group of peasants, men and women together stacking up grain around a thrashing machine in the perfect atmosphere of a cool autumn day, one may believe that the rich black soil can quickly heal the scars of the past. But another mood may take the upper hand when one sees one of the empty huts, windows gutted, floor torn up, overrun with weeds and creepers, the former home of a victim or a refugee of last winter."
A news report from Paris printed in Svoboda on November 17 noted that Russian organizations outside the boundaries of the Soviet Union had sent telegrams to President Roosevelt, stating that they were sure he was aware of the famine situation in Ukraine. They asked the president to send an American mission to the Soviet Union before recognizing the country, and protested against the famine.
The telegram was signed by The Russkyi National Committee, the Russkyi National Committee branch in France, the Russian Central Association, and the Army-Navy Association.
On November 17, an article on page 2 commented on the situation in Soviet Ukraine. According to the commentary, which related Rabbi Phillip S. Berstein's trip through Soviet Ukraine, the people were tremendously afraid of the government, even more afraid to talk to foreigners about their situation.
He wrote that he saw people lining up at midnight in food store lines to make sure they would be able to get their rations when the doors opened at 9 a.m.
That same day, a reprint of a letter published in The Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia, noted: "It must be observed that the new harvest will not relieve the extreme distress of the Ukrainian country. According to the advice of informants, this next winter will be as deadly for Ukraine as the preceeding one; the race is seriously weakened, the Soviet organization completely disorganized with the result that crops have been harvested in a very unsatisfactory manner."
The letter writer continued: "The modification of the Moscow attitude towards Ukraine should be the essential basis of all action in favor of the dying race.
"The Soviet Republic of Ukraine was populated before the year 1933 with 31 million inhabitants, and the north of the Caucasus is almost identical in extent and peopled principally with Ukrainians. During the past winter and spring, the people of these agricultural regions, almost completely deprived of foodstuffs, have been obliged to feed on the bark of trees and various herbs, on rats and dogs whence has ensued an enormous mortality. Helpless bodies of the famished and the sick lay scattered through village streets and the marketplaces in towns; because of deaths and wholesale exodus of the populace, entire villages were wiped out.
"The Moscow government has taken all precautions to hide the truth and has forbidden even the correspondents of foreign newspapers to visit the regions struck by famine. Upon reliable testimony it is necessary to believe that several million people have perished through the course of this famine in the last months in the Ukrainian country."
A story from Lviv printed in Svoboda on November 18, said that during the National Day of Mourning, on October 29, the churches were overcrowded with people who came to pray for their brothers and sisters in Soviet Ukraine and listen to the priests' homilies on the situation.
Also on that day, excerpts from letter to a Svoboda reader from his family in Ukraine shed light on the tragic situation in Ukraine. The letter said:
"Brother, thank you very much for your gift. I don't even know how to thank you for saving us from death. I would have died this spring; you my brother, saved me from death. You saved me and my children. I will never forget this."
A procession had been scheduled for November 18 to protest the famine and U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union. Svoboda published an appeal to all Ukrainians to march in the parade.
A resolution from Detroit was published in Svoboda also on November 18. Issued by Americans of Ukrainian descent in Detroit, it protested the Soviet Union's tyranny over Ukraine.
In the November 21 issue of Svoboda, Pierre van Passen, a correspondent for the Toronto Dealer wrote from Kiev, describing the terrible economic conditions and stating that the Ukrainian peasants will have to go through yet another famine in the spring of 1934.
He wrote that probably the biggest jokes were the official communiques issued by the Soviet government which stated that there was no famine in Ukraine, and that the planting was going as scheduled. The correspondent commented on this last point, saying that in some villages there were not even enough workers to sow the fields - they had died of hunger.
Also on November 21, Svoboda reported that Pavel Postyshev, secretary of the Ukrainian SSR Communist Party, was restructuring the Komsomol organization because it had done nothing to help meet the grain quota set by Moscow.
On the front page, an article about the Ukrainians marching in protest in New York appeared. The demonstration to protest U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union included 8,000 marchers who were followed by Communists who marched alongside yelling and calling the protesters, "Petliurists, fascists, 'pohromchyks' and Hitlerites."
The procession ended at 67th street at the Central Opera, where a public meeting about the famine in Soviet Ukraine was held.
On November 22, the Svoboda headline read: "Priest sentenced for delivering homily about famine." The news report was datelined Peremyshliany, western Ukraine. The priest was placed in jail for three weeks and his home was searched.
Also on that day, Svoboda reported that in Czechoslovakia, also on October 29, a public meeting of the Ukrainian community was held and donations were collected for the famine victims in Ukraine.
News datelined Providence, R.I., was featured on page 1 of Svoboda on November 24. A Ukrainian delegation went to see the governor of the state to inform him of the situation in Ukraine and ask for his aid.
On November 27, news reported from Prague, Paris and Rumania said that telegrams had been sent to President Roosevelt, urging him to support Ukrainian Americans in their efforts to help the hungry in Ukraine.
Also on this day, a Norristown Herald Times article was reprinted in Svoboda. It called for the opposition of federal loans to the Soviet government and only conditional recognition of Russia.
The article read in part:
"Finally, we appeal and beg the United States government to establish a Red Cross base in Ukraine which shall serve as a medium of help for all the unfortunate and starving Ukrainian population sent by the Ukrainians and other people throughout the world. At the present time the Bolshevik dictatorship does not permit the sending of any help whatsoever.
"In their direct appeal to President Roosevelt they ask: 'We, the American citizens of Ukrainian descent, on behalf of our unfortunate brothers and sisters, appeal to you and your sense of justice and humanity, to use your influence and power to put a stop to the continuation of the unpresedented acts of barbarisn committed upon the Ukrainian people by the Bolsheviki dictatorship.'"
On November 17, The Ukrainian Weekly published an editorial on "Our Youth and the Soviets." It said:
"We should bring to America's attention by means of the press the fact that Soviet Russia is not one nation but a conglomeration of enslaved alien nationalities who desire to live their own independent lives but are prevented from doing so only by the Bolshevik rule of brutal force and terror."
The following Weekly, dated November 24, followed with an editorial on "Our Stand" which stated:
"The Ukrainians in America have found themselves at the present time in a rather unenviable position. For, at the time when the United States government has recognized Soviet Russia, the Ukrainians in America, although loyal American citizens, are forced to wage an unremmitting campaign of protests against the Soviets for their barbarism in having caused by means of a deliberately fostered famine in Ukraine the death of millions of Ukrainians during the past year."
* * *
Around the world:
On November 16, the United States government officially recognized the Soviet Union.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 25, 1983, No. 39, Vol. LI
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