On May 15 Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution, On an Address to the Ukrainian People from the Participants of the Verkhovna Rada Special Meeting to Commemorate Victims of the 1932-1933 Holodomor, declaring that the catastrophic manmade famine, which claimed lives of untold millions of Ukrainians, was “an act of genocide” and “a terrorist act of the political system of Stalinism” against the Ukrainian people, UNIAN reported. The resolution was supported by 226 lawmakers, the minimum required for its adoption, of the 410 attending the session.
When almost three years ago in late October 2000 the president of Ukraine issued an order, On the Day to Commemorate Victims of the Famine and Political Repression, it seemed that the state had finally formulated its approach to its totalitarian past. However, the discussion of the resolution at the hearings left the impressions that there were more questions than answers.
Perhaps we will have to wait for a proper historical, legal, and moral estimate of, to quote the address, “such a social catastrophe in the history of our country as the 1932-1933 Holodomor Famine which is worthy of annual commemoration of its uncounted victims.” According to various estimates, from 3 to 10 million of our compatriots died. The discrepancy in figures is truly startling. The low figure, between 3 and 3.5 million was argued by Prof. Stanislav Kulchytsky last year (“How Many of Us Perished in the Holodomor of 1933,” Dzerkalo tyzhnia, No. 45, November 23-29, 2002). When one considers a number of circumstances, there are very good reasons to consider Kulchytsky’s estimate a significant understatement: (1) the Holodomor also ravaged the largely Ukrainian Kuban, directed there by Lazar Kaganovich while Molotov was carrying out the job in Ukraine; (2) Stalinist figures are notoriously unreliable, and even in the 1928 controversy surrounding Mykhailo Volobuyev’s argument that the Ukrainian SSR was being exploited within the USSR it became clear that you could find different official statistics to prove anything, while by 1932 almost all sources of reliable statistics were being systematically destroyed; (3) the documents show that villages that were depopulated by the Holodomor and attendant repressive measures were resettled by people brought in by other republics (for example, on November 22, 1932, Stalin personally ordered the “resettlement” of 2000 “kulak” families from the North Caucasus with their land and property to be given to reliable peasants from other republics; and without any provision for the support of such “enemies of the people” at their points of destination it is safe to estimate that most died) and this was reflected by a drop of the percentage of Ukrainians in both the Soviet Union and Ukraine substantially in excess of the population decline in the Ukrainian SSR itself; and (4) other famines have usually shown a higher than average birth rate a year and a half to two years after they ended because of delayed childbearing and that those in their prime childbearing years were most likely to survive. Factoring all this in would require some pretty sophisticated number-crunching, but it would not lead to the seven to ten million figure often cited. For example, the US Commission on the Ukraine Famine said only that millions died and found that it constituted genocide because of what went along with it. The problem of genocide is not in how many people died but whether it was used to help permanently cripple a given nation as such.
Among the unpleasant surprises was the fact that at the hearing the scheduled speech by President Leonid Kuchma, which was intended to raise the level of discussion at the Verkhovna Rada session, did not take place. The half-empty session hall (representatives of the Left factions demonstratively ignored the meeting) was depressing. Only a few of the 450 deputies listened carefully to the speeches of Vice Premier on Humanitarian Affairs Dmytro Tabachnyk, very competent historian, from the government and People’s Deputy Hennady Udovenko, learned in international law, from the parliament. Why? Of course it is easier and more pleasant to demonstrate one’s oratorical gifts at such meetings. Many of the absent deputies do it all the time. In this case, by contrast, they should have listened to the arguments carefully and attentively. Unfortunately, what happened was the muddled thinking, to which we have become all too accustomed.
Certainly, it is necessary to condemn and recognize Ukrainian famines on global level, but the state also has to decide on its own position. Chairman of the Kyiv branch of the Memorial Society Roman Krutsyk noted, “Today Verkhovna Rada should pass not an address but a law On Recognizing the Famine as Genocide. It is a pity for us and our parliament that, while the fact of genocide in Ukraine was recognized by the US Congress (actually a commission, not Congress as a whole — Ed.), the parliaments of Canada, and even Denmark, we continue to mouth half-truths. We do not even want to follow the precedents of the European states. Take the US, which presented its apologies for slavery to all of Africa, or Kwasniewski and Schroeder to the Jews; the Pope has also made apologies for the Inquisition. We still don’t want to tell the truth about those crimes and criminals involved in the genocide and repression against the Ukrainian people. These actions or rather inaction by the state are evidence of their knowledge about Ukraine on the level of a Soviet fourth grade textbook. Without coming to terms with our totalitarian past we will never be able to move forward in terms of either our economy nor politics. The Baltic states, Poles, and Czechs have already done this, and now they are developing as part of the united Europe.”
