Holodomor

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XXIII

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July 16-31
On July 17, Svoboda reported a news item carried by the Communist newspaper Pravda. The reports stated that Pavlo Postyshev, newly appointed second secretary of the Communist Party in Ukraine and first secretary of the Metropolitan Kharkiv Party Provincial Committee, has recently made a speech about the “mistakes” Mykola Skrypnyk had made as commissar of education in Ukraine. According to Postyshev’s report, Skrypnyk had been too lenient in his dealings with Ukrainians, allowing them too much freedom. Three days after this report (July 7) Skrypnyk committed suicide. The news speculated that Skrypnyk felt “threatened after he learned that his fate was going to be similar to those who spread the bourgeois culture of Dontsov, Yefremov and Hrushevsky in Ukraine.”

Holodomor

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XXII

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July 1-15, 1933
A July 1 story in Svoboda datelined Moscow stated that the Communist regime had issued an order which disbanded the autonomous court system in the republics of the Soviet Union. Svoboda commented that Ukraine had been deprived of even more of what little “independence” it had from Moscow. That same day Svoboda printed news from Kharkiv which reported that the Donbas had not met its coal quota. A commissar, who was currently supervising production there, reported that this lack of production was due to workers’ sabotage. On July 10 Svoboda carried an item received from Finland which reported that many people had escaped from Russia and fled to Finland to escape hunger.

Holodomor

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XVII

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March 1933
On March 1, 1933, Svoboda reported on a news story filed by The New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty. He wrote that, despite efforts on the part of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, the peasants refused to sow grain for the spring planting. Mr. Duranty believed that the reason for this was because the peasants had planted last season’s crop and it was taken away from them; the government had not left them enough to eat and they were not ready for a repeat of this. According to the news, the Soviets were planning to collect all the grain they needed from Ukraine, the Caucasus and lower Volga regions. However, they would be faced with difficulties because the peasantry refused to plant the grain, thereby sabotaging Soviet plans.

Holodomor

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XXI

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June 1933
In mid-1933, Svoboda received eyewitness reports about the famine in Ukraine. On June 3, Svoboda printed a news item from Warsaw; it related the experiences of visitors to southern Ukraine and the Crimean region. The news stated that the people fleeing the famine would wait at train stations for weeks, trying to find room on the trains passing through their villages. The stations were overcrowded with people dying from hunger, or suffering from typhoid and physical exhaustion. The eyewitnesses reported they saw corpses of dead children lying on the station platforms.

According to the reports from Poland; the desperate circumstances led to wide-scale banditry, to the point that it was unsafe to be outside after 7 p.m. Cases of cannibalism were also reported, according to the eyewitness accounts.

Ukraine

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XX

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May 1933
On May 1, 1933, Svoboda received news from a German newspaper, Koelnische Zeitung, which reported that the famine in “all of Russia” was growing worse and worse. According to reports, the populace ate dogs, cats and other animals, searching for salvation from hunger. The German correspondent said people swelled from hunger and collapsed during work from physical exhaustion. He wrote that although the Communist regime had tried to carry out its grain-planting campaign, it could not force the peasants to work in the fields “with enthusiasm” when they had no grain to plant. Also on May 1, Svoboda received a letter from one of its readers who had corresponded with his family in eastern Ukraine.

Holodomor

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XIX

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April 16-30, 1933
The headlines in Svoboda on April 18 read: “Bolsheviks Execute Peasants.” According to reports from London, English correspondents had learned that the populace of three villages was exiled to the North for taking part in a rebellion against the secret police. Some peasants were executed for interfering with spring planting on collective farms. The news stated that the Communist regime had decided not to bother with court trials in these cases, but to dispose of the peasants in its own way – execution or exile. The peasants found out about the executions in the town newspapers, which, according to the London reports, “once in a while” published lists of the executed individuals. Svoboda reported on April 22 that Communist newspapers in the Soviet Union said that the “Bolsheviks were pleased with their planting campaign.”

Holodomor

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XVIII

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April 1-15, 1933
On April 1, Svoboda headlines read: “Bolshevik Sympathizer Does Not Deny Existence of Famine in Ukraine.” The news item referred to Walter Duranty, correspondent for The New York Times, who upon reading Gareth Jones’ reports in The Manchester Guardian, stated that these conditions were not characteristic of those throughout the Soviet Union. Mr. Duranty reported that conditions in Ukraine were bad. However, people were not dying from hunger; they were dying from diseases caused by malnutrition, he stated. On April 4, Svoboda ran news from the Moscow newspaper, Krasnaya Gazeta, which reported that the Ukrainian peasants had not received any grain for planting.

Holodomor

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XVI

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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.

Holodomor

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XV

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February 1-12, 1933
Svoboda reported news from Moscow on February 2, 1933, that the Soviet regime was planning various measures to ensure a successful spring planting, especially in the Kuban and Caucasus regions. According to the news, Stalin had issued a decree which was aimed at guaranteeing better agricultural production; he placed emphasis on the use of machinery, mainly tractors. Svoboda reported that this dependence on machinery was odd since during the previous year, the Soviet press had reported that the use of tractors had proven to be only between 8 and 29 percent successful. In addition, many of the tractors were in dire need of repair, the newspapers reported. On February 6, the Soviet press reported that the Communists were urging youths (age 8-16) to be informers and to report any falsifications of information on the new internal Soviet passports then being issued.

Holodomor

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XIV

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January 16-31, 1933
On January 16 Svoboda reported news from Moscow which stated that the Communist Party Central Committee would establish commissar posts at every tractor station in the Soviet Union. The commissars, along with helpers would see to it that the orders of the Soviet government were carried out by the collective farm workers and factory laborers. The orders were: to make sure no one sabotaged government plans; to organize workers into collective farms and factories; to conduct propaganda for the Communist Party; and to punish all who did not follow the orders of the party, especially the kulaks. The commissars, who were members of the secret police, were to report their progress to Moscow on a regular basis. On that same day, O. Snovyda wrote a commentary in Svoboda titled “The Downfall of the (Bolshevik) Communist Party in Ukraine.”