Verkhovna Rada declares Famine of 1932-1933 act of genocide (06/01/03)

Verkhovna Rada declares Famine of 1932-1933 act of genocide

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - With little fanfare and no Communist protest, Ukraine's Parliament passed a resolution on May 15 declaring the Great Famine of 1932-1933 "an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation."

The resolution, which was formulated as an address to the Ukrainian people in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of the artificially created famine, came a day after the Verkhovna Rada had held its first parliamentary hearing dedicated to the subject.

National Deputy Hennadii Udovenko, chairman of the parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, explained that it was the first time that a Ukrainian state body had officially debated and passed judgment on the tragic events of 1932-1933.

"With this document we noted for the first time that we discussed openly and condemned the politics of genocide," Mr. Udovenko said.

The former minister of foreign affairs and former president of the United Nations General Assembly added that, while he was pleased with the resolution, he believed that a law firmly establishing Ukraine's position on the Great Famine as genocide against the Ukrainian nation is needed. He noted as well that another important result of the public debate on the Great Famine was that specific plans for a memorial museum complex on the Great Famine had been decided.

The resolution that the Ukrainian Parliament barely managed to pass states that "in an independent Ukraine the terrible truth of those years must be publicized by the state inasmuch as the Famine of 1932-1933 was organized by the Stalin regime and should be publicly condemned by the Ukrainian nation and the international community as one of the largest genocides in history in terms of the number of victims."

It goes on to state that the Verkhovna Rada "recognizes the Famine of 1932-1933 as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation, based on the hellish plans of the Stalinist regime."

It further states that recognition of the Great Famine as genocide is needed to help stabilize the social-political relations within the county; correct the historical record and bring historical justice and moral healing to generations of survivors and their heirs who were not allowed to relate or reveal what had occurred; and help the country avoid future "attempts at new dictatorships and violation of the most sacred of human right, the right to life."

Finally, the resolution expressed the need for Ukraine to have the international community recognize the Great Famine as genocide, in order that the country could finally "be considered a fully worthy, civilized nation."

The Verkhovna Rada's resolution, it should be noted, cited the conclusion of the congressionally mandated U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine that the Great Famine was a genocide of the Ukrainian nation. The commission's report was released in 1988.

While it took two votes to find the minimum 226 ayes required for passage, no lawmakers voted against the proposal, even though 183 of the 410 present abstained. The resolution passed with no prior discussion and, most surprisingly, without storms of protest from the Communist side of the gallery.

Also, unexpected and even perplexing, there were practically no broadcast or print accounts of the landmark vote. Only one press agency of note, UNIAN, reported the decision, as did the newspapers Ukraina Moloda and Chas.

The Ukrainian parliamentary body as well had paid little heed a day earlier, during the first-ever Verkhovna Rada hearing on the matter, when Vice Prime Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk told a nearly vacant parliamentary session hall that at all echelons of the state leadership of Ukraine today there is full recognition that the Famine was a planned attempt to extinguish a portion of the Ukrainian nation by starvation. He called on a Verkhovna Rada-led effort to have the United Nations recognize the Great Famine as genocide, on par with the Holocaust committed against the Jewish nation.

The few Verkhovna Rada members of the Communist Party of Ukraine present at that hearing were the only ones to voice dissent, with one Communist lawmaker plainly stating, "There was a hunger [holod] caused by natural circumstances, but it was not death by forced starvation [holodomor]."

Today it is generally recognized that from 7 million to 10 million Ukrainians died in 1932-1933 as a result of a deliberate Moscow policy to force the peasants of Ukraine into submission and onto collective farms through confiscation of grain and other foodstuffs. At the height of the Famine, when the Soviet Union was selling wheat for hard currency, there were reports of cannibalism in many parts of Ukraine.

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