Dear Editor:
According to the Spanish philosopher George Santayana, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The current situation in Venezuela illustrates the relevance of tragedies like the Holodomor for the present. It is surprising how many similarities one can find in what are very different situations in terms of time, geography and circumstances.
First, both countries are potentially very rich. Ukraine has been described as “the granary of Europe,” and Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil in the world. However, during the 1932-1933 Famine about 4 million persons, or 12 percent of the population, were starved to death by Joseph Stalin’s regime, as the government took away from the peasants almost all the grain and in many cases all the food. The number of deaths caused by the crisis in Venezuela is unknown, but thousands of children are malnourished, and last year each person in Venezuela lost, on average, 10 pounds.
Second, an estimated 4 million Venezuelans, more than 10 percent of its population, fled the country. In Soviet Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of peasants traveled to Russia in search of food. They were arrested and sent back to their villages. Stalin closed the borders between Ukraine and Russia and Belarus, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian peasants were condemned to death by starvation.
Third, when news about the Famine reached the West, international and government agencies, as well as churches and charitable organizations, offered food assistance to Ukraine. Stalin refused to accept the aid, claiming that there was no famine in Soviet Ukraine. Something similar is happening currently at Venezuela’s borders. The government refused to accept international food, while the people were starving.
Fourth, the tragedy in Venezuela is not over, and it is difficult to estimate its final human cost. Deaths caused by the 1932-1933 Famine, on the other hand, have been well documented. The 12 percent of Holodomor losses is a national average. In some oblasts (equivalent to U.S. states), losses were as high as 25 percent of the rural population, and in some raions (equivalent to U. S. counties), more than half of the rural population was decimated by the Holodomor. At the peak of the Famine, June 1933, there were 28,000 famine-related deaths per day. These are mind-boggling statistics.
Lastly, Russia was the dominant member of the Soviet Union and, not coincidentally, the current Russian government is one of the strongest supporters of President Nicolas Maduro’s government. In the tradition of Stalin’s policy of disinformation, the Russian propaganda machine has labeled the food aid to Venezuela a “Trojan horse.” [Editor’s note: On March 29 it was reported that the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies announced it would be allowed to bring aid into Venezuela.]
As stated by Santayana, the past is an important lesson for the present and the future.
Chapel Hill, N.C.
The letter writer is a fellow at the Center of Slavic, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.