THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FAMINE-GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE

International conference at Columbia University examines Famine-Genocide

by Roma Hadzewycz

NEW YORK - An international conference at Columbia University's International Affairs Building discussed the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, focusing on three main topics: "the politics of acknowledgment" of the Famine, new archival evidence that has emerged since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Famine in people's memory and the arts.

Held on Monday, November 10, the conference was the kick-off to Famine Remembrance Week in New York City, which also featured an exhibit, a screening of the documentary "Harvest of Despair" and a memorial concert at the United Nations, as well as a March of Remembrance and requiem service at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

The international conference was opened with remarks by Prof. Mark von Hagen, a professor of history at Columbia University, who underscored the relevance of the proceedings being held 70 years after 7 million to 10 million people in Ukraine died as a result of Stalin's genocidal policies. Prof. von Hagen, who also chaired the conference's first two panels, noted that "restoring the truth about the Famine-Genocide is one of the central tasks in reshaping Ukrainian historical and civic consciousness." He also cited similar conferences taking place at Harvard and Stanford universities, the Kennan Institute in Washington and the University of Toronto. (For full text of Prof. von Hagen's remarks, see page 8.)

Welcoming remarks were delivered also by Andrei Harasymiak, executive secretary of the Ukrainian Studies Fund; Victoria Baranetsky, president of the Columbia University Ukrainian Student Society; and Catharine Nepomnashchy, director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia.

The conference's first panel examined "The Politics of Acknowledgment," that is, the "National and International Response to the Man-Made Famine." Valeriy Kuchinsky, Ukraine's permanent representative to the United Nations stated that "The Stalinist regime, in two years, purposely exterminated over 7 million innocent men, women and children. And the basis of these criminal acts had a political purpose."

He went on to explain: "It was necessary for the regime to liquidate the wealthier independent-minded peasants who were the backbone of the Ukrainian nation. Due to state regulations, all trade was prohibited in rural areas, food supplies were cut off from the villages, the distribution of bread was 'unlawful,' and a system of mass grain confiscation was implemented. Against this background, a campaign targeting the Ukrainian intelligentsia and priests was carried out as well. Even the slightest attempts to resurrect the Ukrainian language, culture and national consciousness were stemmed."

"In fact, the Famine of 1933," he underscored, "was a horrific weapon of mass destruction which was used by the Soviet regime in Ukraine. It was not by any means a natural phenomenon but a cynical form of state terrorism against its own people." (The text of Ambassador Kuchinsky's remarks was published in last week's issue.)

Ambassador Kuchinsky also took some time in his remarks to explain the significance of a joint declaration "On the 70th Anniversary of the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine (Holodomor)" that was being released that day as an official document of the United Nations signed by 30 member-states. Explaining that the declaration refers to the Famine as "a national tragedy for the Ukrainian people," he said it does not, however, call it a genocide. The diplomat added that "this is just the first step" and that Ukraine "will continue to press this issue further."

Next to speak was National Deputy Hennadii Udovenko, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Human Rights, formerly Ukraine's minister of foreign affairs and Ukraine's former ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Udovenko provided some perspective on what he called "the conservative nature of the U.N.," which he said makes it "difficult to get recognition of the Famine as genocide." He expressed his hope that the Famine-Genocide would someday be as well-known throughout the world as the Holocaust. "I would like to achieve the stage when the whole world knows what 'Holodomor' means, that 10 million people died, that it was a genocide."

Dr. James Mace, who served as staff director of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine established by the U.S. Congress and today teaches at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, began his remarks by observing that "it is very important for Ukraine to have recognition of the Famine as genocide." He went on to note that one of the first recognitions of this fact came from the autonomous Basque region of Spain and that the Basques have raised this issue in the European Union's Parliament. Dr. Mace pointed also to resolutions adopted in Argentina, Canada and Australia, as well as by the Foreign Affairs Committee in Hungary, and the U.S. House of Representatives. The latter, though it referred to the finding of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine that the Famine was genocide, did not declare outright that the Great Famine of 1932-1933 was genocide. He added that Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada passed a measure in May which declared that the Famine was genocide.

Dr. Mace then went on to speak about the politics behind the establishment of the U.S. commission, as well as the oral history project conducted by the Ukrainian American Professionals and Businesspersons of New York and New Jersey, which served as the basis for the commission's own oral history component of its report, along with the public hearings held at several venues throughout the United States to hear survivors' testimony.

Dr. Mace said that he "argued to the commission that there was a pattern of intent which constituted a pattern of genocide" against the Ukrainian nation.

The case of Gareth Jones

"Gareth Jones: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness" was the title of the presentation by Dr. Margaret Siriol Colley, niece of the Welsh journalist who exposed the truth about the Famine in Ukraine. (The full text of her presentation will be published in next week's issue.) The speaker is the author of "Gareth Jones: A Manchukuo Incident," a book that details the young journalist's travels and reports from the scene, which ultimately took him to Japanese-occupied Manchuria, known as Manchukuo, where he was murdered by bandits. According to Dr. Colley, Jones "was conveniently airbrushed out of history" even though he was the journalist who first told the truth about the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine.

"His only crime," Dr. Colley underlined, "was to tell the truth." She then recounted how in March 1933 when the young Jones filed a news reports from Berlin that was transmitted by the Knickerbocker news service, the world learned about people in Ukraine dying of hunger. The infamous Walter Duranty of The New York Times, she continued, issued a rebuttal two days later, claiming that there was no famine in Ukraine, perhaps only cases of malnutrition. Jones responded to that rebuttal in a letter to the editor of The New York Times published in May 1933 in which he stood by his story and congratulated the Soviets and their supporters on their success in concealing the truth about what was happening in the Ukrainian countryside.

Jones also told the story of what he had observed in the USSR in a of talks through Europe and the United States. In 1935 he reasserted his previous observations from 1933 in the Hearst newspapers in the United States. Soon after that he was murdered under mysterious circumstances in Manchukuo. "For almost 70 years his articles were forgotten. Now he has been rediscovered and his reporting has been vindicated," stated Dr. Colley. "Gareth Jones' ghost has come back to haunt those who stopped at nothing to silence his conscience," she said.

Dr. Colley concluded with a thank-you to Prof. von Hagen "for the honor of speaking at this prestigious platform, which has allowed me to finally put my uncle's soul to rest - by recognizing at this conference his courageous role in [uncovering] one of the great barbaric episodes in humanity."

The Kazakstani tragedy

At the conclusion of the morning panel, Kazakstan's ambassador to the United Nations, Yerzhan Kh. Kazykhanov, delivered a statement of support and sympathy for the victims of the Great Famine of 1932-1933.

"Expressing deepest sympathies to the victims of the Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933, we believe that we should honor their memory in a meaningful way: that is, we should work to raise the awareness of the world public of the tragic events in the history of Ukraine so that people in every part of the globe know about them and feel compassion. We owe it to them," he stated.

"Like our brothers in Ukraine, we do not want to settle scores with the past. Indeed, you cannot change your past. Yet we deeply believe that we should never forget all those who perished in that Famine and that we should be mindful of our history. That memory will be a guiding light for future generations that will help them prevent the reoccurrence of similar human disasters. That can be achieved only through the rule of law, full enjoyment of human rights and the democratization of our societies."

Ambassador Kazykhanov stated: "Kazakstan and Ukraine share the same history, whose tragic pages are part of their heritage. Just as for Ukraine, the 1930s were one of the toughest periods in the history of our country that witnesses a mass loss of life of Kazaks during forced general collectivization that became known as the Kazakstani tragedy." He went on to note that "the people of Kazakstan in reality fell victims to oppression bordering on genocide," that the nation's traditional way of life was destroyed, that Kazakstan "was turned into a huge camp for prisoners from all over the Soviet Union," and that "peasants who were supposed to feed other groups of the population became themselves victims of the famine." Those well off, he continued, were exiled and their property was seized, mass political repressions affected practically all segments of society, as many were shot, sent to prison camps or exiled. "In two years, 1.8 million people, or a third of the general population of the republics lost their lives," he stated.

New evidence from the archives

The second panel of the conference was devoted to "Archival Evidence Since the End of the Soviet Union," featured three scholars from Ukraine and one from Washington.

In his paper, Volodymyr S. Lozitskyi, director of the Central States Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine, who also heads the Society of Archivists of Ukraine, noted that there are three types of documents that relate to the events surrounding the Famine-Genocide: documents on the direction of grain procurements; documents on suffering, deaths and mortality in local regions (though no comprehensive figures are available); and documents regarding the political disposition of the peasantry, for example their displacement to collective farms or deportation.

Mr. Lozitskyi noted that it was only in January 1990 that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine issued a decree on previously secret archives that permitted their release. "Without exaggeration it is possible to say that the truth about the Famine played a key role in the national renaissance at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s and became one of the most important factors in the gaining of Ukraine's independence," he said.

"In archival documentation the personal participation of Stalin, [Viacheslav] Molotov and [Lazar] Kaganovich in the excessive application of the grain procurement plan or Ukraine in 1932 is clearly traced, as well as the severe methods by which they sought the plan's unconditional execution and the provision of other districts of the Soviet Union with grain," he revealed.

"Whatever the cost," he explained, "it was necessary to extract grain from Ukraine, the northern Caucasus and the Kuban, where the population was primarily Ukrainian." Still other documents, Mr. Lozitskyi pointed out, focus on the need to stop Ukrainianization and liquidate the opposition.

The speaker concluded his presentation by commenting that "now that the archives in Ukraine and some in Russia are open, there is an opportunity to conduct new and further research."

Volodymyr P. Danylenko, director of the Kyiv Oblast Archive, explained at the outset of his presentation that "over the course of 60 years no one spoke of the tragic events of 1932-1933; instead they were hidden from the Ukrainian people and the international community. ... The Great Famine was a closed topic for researchers, and it was not permitted to mention a word of this horrible catastrophe in newspapers or official documents. Information from abroad was qualified as insinuations."

It was only in November 1987 that Communist Party officials revealed that in late 1932 and early 1933 there were serious provisional hardships in Ukraine, "and famine in rural localities." Mr. Danylenko went on to note that eyewitness accounts in the Kyiv Oblast do not constitute a large collection, but they demonstrate that "the Famine of 1933 was a logical consequence of Moscow's program of forced collectivization."

"In 1929-1933, the Ukrainian village was dealt a double blow," he said, "dekurkulization and collectivization. This meant, first, the physical annihilation or deportation of millions of peasants to the north, and, second, the concentration of the rest of the peasantry in Bolshevik-controlled kolhospy (collective farms)."

Mr. Danylenko went on to cite the recollections of Famine survivors. In the Obukhiv region, for example, the Great Famine took 27,000 lives - a third of them children. "These are horrible numbers indeed, made more so with the realization that 6,000 Obukhiv residents died over the course of the four years of World War II."

He concluded his presentation by observing that "Despite the decades-long silence of the truth about the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 committed by the Communist authorities, the Ukrainian people have remembered these horrible times. In village cemeteries today, one can see small bouquets of wheat and rye placed on the graves. This is a monument to the Great Famine, to its innocent victims."

Yurii Shapoval, a historian with the Institute of Political Analysis in Kyiv, spoke on documents in the archives of the present-day security services of Ukraine (SBU) and Russia (FSB). He explained at the beginning of his talk that Ukraine today finds itself in a triangle that stymies its work on "that which should not be forgotten": Vladimir Putin's Russia, the unsure attitude of the West and the uncertain leadership in Ukraine. Furthermore, he noted, "we cannot objectively assess the topic [of the Famine] without looking at Ukraine-Russia relations at the time." This effort is hampered by the fact that right now there are no contacts between Russian and Ukrainian scholars that would be able to support such efforts.

Dr. Shapoval was critical of Russia's attitude toward the Famine, pointing to the Russian Embassy's statement that U.S. legislators do not know what genocide is - this in reference to Senate Resolution 202, which unequivocally calls the famine a genocide. He was critical also of the joint declaration released that day at the United Nations in which he pointed out "there is not a word about condemnation of Stalinism" and questioned "Is this a step forward for the U.N.?"

The speaker went on to point to new revelations found in Soviet archives. For example, he said, it is now known that in 1931 150,000 people died. "We've never seen this number before; it was an awful, concrete signal to the authorities."

As proof of the premeditated nature of Stalin's policies in Ukraine, he also cited a March 15, 1933, letter from Stanislav Kossior, a leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine, to Stalin. The letter reported: "Starvation has not yet taught many kolhosp members sense and reason."

Dr. Shapoval also reported that Stalin's treatment of Ukraine and even its party cadres was particular. Party members' loyalty was questioned at the time of the grain procurements, and it was stated that "if we do not correct what is going on we will lose Ukraine." Fines were applied to both individuals and collective farms in Ukraine; there was a prohibition against trading in foodstuffs and livestock; and there was a halt of deliveries of provisions to certain areas, he explained. Most nefarious was a prohibition against fleeing Ukraine, a food blockade and a prohibition against delivering food to help the people survive," Dr. Shapoval emphasized.

Dr. Leonard Leshuk, a freelance historian and author of "U.S. Intelligence Perceptions of Soviet Power, 1921-1946," spoke on information in declassified documents in U.S. intelligence archives. Those documents, he related, reveal "wide swings in perceptions of the USSR and its power, from powerful and bent on world domination to weak and ineffective."

He commented that the information in the archives leading up to 1932-1933 is very significant to the study of the Famine. In the late 1920s, for instance, he said there were reports of resistance and the desire for outside help. "Already one could see all the conditions developing for a catastrophic famine." These reports, he explained, came from U.S. diplomats in Warsaw and in Berlin. In July 1930, for example, there is a report from Berlin on a temporary halt to collectivization and the danger of millions of people perishing.

In 1931, Dr. Leshuk said, there is a report from a Belarusian who tells of confiscation of foodstuffs, farms and livestock, of deportations in 1929-1931; the informant tells of meeting deported Ukrainians and of soldiers guarding bread trucks.

Also in 1931, a U.S. diplomat reported that the USSR's populace was deeply discontented, the speaker reported. Then, in September 1933, Duranty, while privately saying millions had died, also said the Soviet regime had so alienated the people that it could not embark on a foreign adventure for at least five years.

All these materials, Dr. Leshuk underscored, need to be mined for information and their original sources found if possible, before it's too late. Those comments were echoed by Mr. Danylenko of Kyiv who stated that Kyiv archives "have been almost untouched in terms of Famine research, while Holocaust researchers have made extensive use of them."

Survivors' memories

The final panel of the conference focused on the role of memory and the arts in telling the story of the Famine Genocide. Dr. Mace returned to the previously broached topic of oral history noting that, although "one of the charges against it is that Famine research is based on witnesses who are unreliable and biased, "it is in fact "an old methodology pioneered by Thucydides in his retelling of the Peloponnesian War."

Oral history, he continued, "can provide information on what happened, but not why," Dr. Mace continued, going on to explain the methodology used in obtaining information from subjects and the difficulties involved in the process. In the case of the Famine-Genocide, he said "there were two realities: the one you were supposed to repeat, or the official view; and the one you saw with your own eyes." Thus, he said, the realities can become confused and memories can vary.

At the time of the oral history project on the Great Famine, work that began in 1984, "people were still afraid to talk due to the reach of the USSR ... two-thirds of those who spoke [to the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine] demanded absolute anonymity." Nonetheless, Dr. Mace recalled, "We created a resource that would have been lost. Now it should be reviewed; the transcriptions should be checked and corrected. But we owe a great thanks to those who had the courage to remember."

The panel, which was chaired by Prof. Myroslava Znayenko of Rutgers University, also featured a paper by Roman Krutsyk, chairman of the Memorial Society of Kyiv, who was unable to attend. His paper on oral history in post-Soviet Ukraine (read by Marko Suprun) stated that the first references to the Great Famine were in official documents from November 1987 by First Secretary of the Communist, Party of Ukraine Volodymyr Scherbytsky who referred simply to food shortages.

"The seminal breakthrough," he wrote, "was the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine and its report. Also important was the documentary 'Harvest of Despair.'" Today, much work remains to be done, Mr. Krutsyk said. "Closed archives still need to be researched" and "Soviet documents must be examined with a critical eye."

The Famine researcher also cautioned that "even today people are afraid to talk about the Holodomor." Mr. Krutsyk also expressed criticism of the Ukrainian government, which continues to debate where in Kyiv to situate a memorial complex dedicated to the victims of the Famine and Soviet repressions. He also noted that "pro-Russian forces are working against educating the public about the Holodomor."

Finally, Mr. Krutsyk stated that, unfortunately, "the international community has not recognized this genocide and no one has been brought to responsibility for the Famine."

At the conclusion of the third panel, in an example of literary detective work, Dr. Larissa M.L. Onyshkevych, president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States, analyzed a drama written by Yurii Yanovsky of Kharkiv titled "Potomky." Analyzing various versions of the play, which ultimately was published in 1939, Dr. Onyshkevych pointed to clues about the Famine and descriptions of the people's suffering and their thoughts.

Referring to the "hidden information in his play," especially in earlier drafts, Dr. Onyshkevych concluded that the writer "probably left [these earlier drafts] for the sake of his conscience" and "perhaps, in his own unusual way, Yanovsky was attempting to restore the truth."

The conference was sponsored by the Ukrainian Studies Program and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, Ukraine's Mission to the United Nations, the Shevchenko Scientific Society, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S.A.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, November 30, 2003, No. 48, Vol. LXXI

| Home Page |