Holodomor Remembrance Day: "Extermination by hunger", a man-made famine perpetrated by Russian communists that killed ~8 million Ukrainians during 1932-1933

AwesomeLove · 4日前

On the side of this horrible crime is one of the worst things in the history of journalism where a journalist Walter Duranty just plainly lied about there being oodles of food for his ideological reasons and got a Pulizer Prize for his effots.

sweetbacker · 3日前

Regarding how this looked like for an Ukrainian peasant, check out the Wikipedia article

If you had extra grain after meeting your quota, you had to give it up.
If you could not meet your quota, you had to give up all your livestock.
If you were a part of collective farm and couldn't meet the quota, then the farm was placed on a blacklist and had to give up 15 times the quota. To make sure you did that, activists relieved you of all food.
The quotas you were supposed to meet were then raised impossibly high.
You were not allowed to trade for food.
You were not allowed to receive deliveries of food.
You were not allowed to leave; the borders were sealed.
You were not even allowed not to help relieve other people of their food if so ordered, under penalty of death.
The policies still continued even when after the larger scale requisition targets were met.

skodarap · 4日前

Hmm...where did you come up with 8 million? I mean even the article on wiki you linked puts estimation to 2,5-7,5 mil, not to say that most estimations for the entire USSR don't go higher than 7-8 mil (it's true though that Ukr got the biggest share).

It was a terrible crime, but if you inflate the numbers it'll just increase the number of skeptics.

PM_me_ur_fricatives · 4日前

Ireland remained a net exporter of food during the Great Famine. That says it all, but further details below.

The British were reluctant to supply aid, as they believed that the Irish were inferior to the British and many believed the famine was God's will.

"The famine has been sent by God to teach the Irish a lesson. The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the Irish people." - Charles Edward Trevelyan (in charge of relief for the famine)

The system of food production and land ownership was heavily in favour of the British. The Penal Laws of 1695 meant Catholics couldn't own land, and that the British government could forcibly seize any land they did possess and 'redistribute' it to those deemed more loyal.

Most of the victims of the famine were tenant farmers who rented tiny plots of land, barely large enough to allow subsistence farming. Plots so small that the only crop which was calorie-dense enough to allow survival was the potato. These farmers were the descendants of the original owners who had had their land confiscated during the British conquest and handed over to government officials as rewards for service. This land was carved up into the smallest possible plots to maximize profits, and re-rented back to the original owners at extortionate rates.

Now living in squalor, the Irish were to give a large percentage of their harvest to their landlord, and what remained was allowed for themselves. Once the famine hit, that obviously meant less potatoes. But the landowners continued to require their allotment of their tenants' harvests, so the police and security forces were used to seize these crops from starving families, before being evicted and left to die.

At one point, a sultan attempted to send monetary aid to the Irish, but was asked to reduce the amount he was sending - the amount was more than Queen Victoria had sent and it would have embarrassed her.

The tenant farmers were also the heart of the population who spoke Irish. As they were the population most impacted by the famine, the Irish language was driven to near-extermination.

Some illustrative quotes from British public officials of the time:

Ireland is like a half-starved rat that crosses the path of an elephant. What must the elephant do? Squelch it - by heavens - squelch it. - Thomas Carlyle, British essayist, 1840s

Being altogether beyond the power of man, the cure had been applied by the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence in a manner as unexpected and as unthought of as it is likely to be effectual. - Charles Trevelyan

[existing policies] will not kill more than one million Irish in 1848 and that will scarcely be enough to do much good. - Queen Victoria's economist, Nassau Senior

anirdnas · 4日前

I read survivor stories some time ago, and they were bone-chilling. What a horrible event.

Paradosi · 4日前

by Russian communists

The Bolsheviks/Communists came from many ethnicites that were part of Russian Empire when it fell into civil war.

There were Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, etc Bolsheviks, there were probably even some Chechen Bolsheviks.

arqoi · 4日前

The famine hit parts of Southern Russia and Kazakhstan as well.

How come the millions of Kazakh and Russian farmers who starved are rarely mentioned?

There was also another famine in 1921 which killed an estimated 6 million people in Russia. Communists didn't give two shits about whether you were Ukrainian or Russian or a Kazakh, the USSR was the playground for their ideological theories, all they cared about was whether you followed the dogma(Trotsky and Stalin were Ukrainian and Georgian respectively, while Lenin was half-Chuvash half-Jewish). None of them really gave two shits about their ethnicity, it was all about ideology. To them you were either a Bolshevik or counterrevolutionary/bourgeoisie scum.

solz1 · 3日前

This thing killed a lot of Russians too. So calling it genocide against Ukrainians means forgetting about everybody else.

SoWoWMate · 4日前

Why don't we learn about this genocide btw? In Germany we only hear about the Holocaust, but literally never about the Holodomor. Nearly no one ever heard of it here. Thats kinda sad if you ask me...

bbc_guy · 3日前

TIL Stalin was a Russian communist

zurfer75 · 4日前

A quote from the Kiev city court decision on Holodomor (GTed):

Judge of the Chamber of Criminal Cases of the Appeal Court of Kyiv Skavronik VM, the Secretary Bondarenko MS, with the participation of Attorney Department of the Prosecutor's Office of Kyiv Dotsenko AN undertook a preliminary review of the criminal case number 1-33 / 2010 instituted the Service Safety of Ukraine the fact of committing genocide in Ukraine in 1932-1933 for the crime under Part. 1, Art. 442 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine regarding

Stalin (Dzhugashvili) Stalin, December 21, 1879 born native of the city. Gori, Georgian, since 1903 a member of the Bolshevik Party in April 1922 - Secretary of the CPSU (b);
Molotov (Scriabin) Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, March 9/25 February / 1890 born native of the city. Nolinska Vyatka Governorate (now city. Sovetsk Kirov region of Russia), Russian, since 1906 a member of the Bolshevik Party, from December 1930 to May 1941 - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Council of Labor and Defense;
Kaganovich Lazar Moiseyevich, 22 November 1893 born, born with. Boar (now the village. Poliske Kyiv region), Jewish, a member of the Bolshevik Party of 1911, which since 1921 has worked in the office of the RCP (b) in the years 1924-1925 - Secretary of the CPSU (b) in 1925-1928 - General Secretary of the CC CP (B), during the years 1928-1930 - in leadership positions in the All, Secretary of the CPSU (b) since 1930 - the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee and Regional Party Committee, head of the agricultural and transport departments of the CPSU (b), and since 1937 - Vice-President of SNK excluded from the ranks of the Communist Party in 1961 for participating in mass repression;
Postysheva Paul Petrovich, 18 September 1887 born native of the city. Ivanovo Ascension, Russian, since 1904 a member of the Bolshevik Party, from 1930 to 1933 - Secretary of the CPSU (b) from 29 January 1933 to 17 March 1937 - the second secretary of the CC CP (B) U and First Secretary of the Kharkiv Regional Committee of the CP (B);
Kosior Stanislav Vikentievich, November 18, 1889 birth, born in the city. Venhruv Venhruvskoho County siedlecki province (now the Warsaw Province of Poland), Polish, from July 1907 member of the Bolshevik Party, from 14 July 1928 until December 1937 - Secretary of the CC CP (B) U repressed in 1938, shot 26 February 1939, rehabilitated in 1956;
Vlas Chubar, 22/10 / February 1891 born native village. Fedorivka Alexander County Ekaterinoslav province, Ukrainian, from July 1907 member of the Bolshevik Party, in the period from July 1923 to April 1934 - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR;
Khatayevych Mendel Markovich, March 22, 1893 birth, born in the city. Gomel, Jewish, from July 1913 member of the Bolshevik Party, from October 1932 to January 1933 - the second secretary of the CC CP (B) U, 29 January 1933 - the first secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk regional committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik).

ditchmydismay · 4日前

I thought most of the Soviet was experiencing famine and it was largely due to a combination of natural events and human errors on both sides.

I could well be wrong so feel free to correct me but I don't want to see any silly response from OP like r/RussiaDenies

I am not a Putin bot. :P Just a Brit who's looking at the undecisice evidence or lack thereof to support the title's claim.

irish_smithwick · 3日前

Soviet Communists.

And Stalin was Georgian, if I recall.

Stop trying to hijack this subreddit into Ukraine's cause.

LightOfDendi · 3日前

How convenient that you left out a couple of millions of ethnic Russians who died in the famine as well, but let's just call it a genocide by evil Russians when half of USSR's ruling party of that time period wasn't even Russian like Stalin and Trotsky and call it a day.

anonimski · 4日前

Stalin was Russian?

cametosaybla · 4日前

I wonder if we can use the same phrase for the other genocides and man-made famines, with the words like "capitalists" or even something like maybe "anti-monarchists", or I don't know "conservatives"? Why not go with Stalinist regime or Stalin's rule or something, instead of general terms; I really can't see the logic though I can see the intention.

blackstonebite · 3日前

have no sympathies to any communists, but truth have to be said - there were not only russian communists, but any kind of them - jewish , german and ukrainians as well. and the victims were not exclusively ukrainians. my grandmother told how entire villages along volga and don were wiped out in 32-33. the kazakhs, by the way suffered most of all. more than 1/4 were dead because this hunger

stevejazzx · 4日前

I found this fascinating so looked into it and found this on talk wiki - it seems much more complex

Character Assassination[edit] In his New York Times articles (including one published on March 31, 1933), Duranty repeatedly denied the existence of a Ukrainian famine in 1932–33. In an article in NYT, August 24 1933, he claimed "any report of a famine is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda", This is a pure distortion of his reporting. For one, the quotation is selective. This is what Duranty really wrote on 23 August 1933: The excellent harvest about to be gathered shows that any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda Duranty was entirely correct on this. Demographic reports from the archives show that by September, death rates in Ukraine had largely returned to normal. In June, the crude death rate in Ukraine was 196/1000. By September, however, it dropped to 23/1000. Duranty was therefore correct with his assertion that at the time of his writing, famine in USSR had ceased. As Duranty wrote, the splendid harvest of 1933 had ended by the start of autumn. Duranty, in the very same article, wrote the following:

The food shortage which has affected almost the whole population in the last year, and particularly in the grain-producing provinces--that is, the Ukraine, North Caucasus, the Lower Volga region--has, however, caused heavy loss of life. Although it is pure guesswork to attempt any estimate of the loss of life so far, not so much from actual starvation as from manifold diseases due to lowered resistance and to general disease in the last year, approximations are now possible. Among peasants and others receiving bread rations conditions were certainly not better. So with a total population in the Ukraine, North Caucasus and Lower Volga of upward of 40,000,000 the normal death rate would have been about 1,000,000. Lacking official figures, it is a conservative to suppose that this was at least trebled last year in those provinces and considerably increased for the Soviet Union as a whole. Above, Duranty acknowledged severe economic hardships among the population. Duranty was correct in saying that deaths resulted from manifold diseases rather than actual starvation. Soviet data showed 800,000 cases of typhus in 1933. In the famine-stricken regions of Ukraine, North Caucasus, and Lower Volga, Duranty estimated that there were perhaps 2 million excess deaths. Guess what--Duranty was correct nearly 60 years before the exposure of declassified Soviet data. For 1933 declassified Soviet data showed a total of 1.73 million excess deaths in Ukraine, Lower Volga, and North Caucasus. Therefore, not only did Duranty acknowledge the occurrence of famine which he correctly called a food shortage, he also proved remarkably accurate in his estimations of the demographic consequences.

walt_ua · 4日前

It was a long term plan of Russian communists and Joseph Stalin, an attempt to eliminate the Ukrainian independence movement.

Ukrainians were prohibited to harvest and store any food for personal use, while ripened grain was abundant.

Any kind of edible product was expropriated.

Communist squads swept through Ukrainian countryside searching for food stashes and punishing by death those, who dared to keep anything hidden.

Uprisings in rural areas were brutally suppressed.

Huge parts of the country had been cordoned and roadblocks established; those trying to flee were either shot or turned back to starve to death.

Rural Ukraine was starved to death. The death toll is still not known, while estimates vary from 5 to 10 million. To survive, people were forced to resort to cannibalism. Women eating their children and going mad - a common occurrence during early and mid 1933.

During 1932-1933 Soviet Union sold abroad a record-breaking amount of grain.

To this day Russian government denies any involvement, promoting notion of ''wide-spread drought that affected all of Soviet Union''.

schitler · 4日前

Looking at this thread (including the now deleted comments) I get the impression that the same can be said about the Holodomor as about the Holocaust: "The Russians will never forgive the Ukrainians for the Holodomor."

Bacchus87 · 3日前

Yeah but they weren't real Europeans so they don't actually count as people. Why else is Hitler a dirty word, while Stalin and Mao are mere dictators, when they killed more people?

Bageer · 3日前

"Russian communist" yeah fucking right!?!

Last time I checked Stalin was the supreme ruler of Soviet Union at the time and he was Georgian. Stalin was like Kim Jong Un on steroids, and his word was like Gods gift to people of USSR, and there was no RUSSIAN that could make Stalin change his mind.

Therefore title of this article is wrong or simply made to be propaganda by saying Russian Communist.

tbqhfamsmh · 4日前

Can someone TL;DR me on why this is causing so much controversy? Why do so many people get so booty bamboozled when the Holodomor is brought up?

mataro_1 · 3日前

Look at who the founder of the 90ies might I say The collapse of the White movement would have been crushed before they consolidated much of their power.

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