Ukrainian And Russian Historians Debate The Holodomor

By Roman Serbyn

Ever since Ukrainian politicians and historians began calling the famine of 1932-1933 “Holodomor”, and to regard it as genocide against the Ukrainian people, Russian intellectual circles constantly objected to both designations. Last May, Rodina, a popular historical monthly, founded by the Russian government, organized a “round-table” to discuss “The famine in Ukraine and other Republics of the USSR, in 1932-1933”. Two historians came from Ukraine, one from Belarus and a dozen or so from Russia - mostly Moscow. Extensive excerpts of the debate were published in the August and September issues of the periodical and provide an interesting account of the opposing views on the controversial subject.

The Ukrainian “delegation” consisted of two historians from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Dr. Stanislav Kulchytsky is Ukraine’s foremost authority on the Holodomor and the author of several books and innumerable articles on the subject. Dr. Yury Shapoval edited several collections of documents on the famine and has written extensively about the famine. The Russian hosts invited the Ukrainian guests to begin the session by explaining the Ukrainian understanding of the events.

Professor Kulchytsky affirmed that “the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine was the result of terror by famine”, aimed at preventing the Soviet Union from losing a national republic located on the border with Europe. It was genocide, a “premeditated, well planned and carefully camouflaged killing of millions of Ukrainians”. While excessive grain procurements produced a general famine across the Soviet Union in 1932-1933, it was only in Ukraine and the Kuban region of the RSFSR that the regime confiscated “all other sources of nourishment”, thus deliberately condemning the Ukrainian peasants to death. It was this trait of the regime’s policy that in Kulchytsky’s opinion constituted an act of genocide.

Turning to the UN definition of genocide, which insists on the element of “intent to destroy”, Kulchytsky sensed Stalin’s goal in the “technology of the terror-famine”. The regime blacklisted and isolated Ukrainian villages; it blockaded Ukraine and the Kuban from the rest of the USSR; Ukrainians were subjected to constant search for hidden grain, had to pay penalties in meat and potatoes, and saw random confiscation of other edibles. The authorities conducted a hate campaign against peasants and set the urban population against them. They denied the existence of the famine and tried to hide it from the outside world. The policy was directed not just against peasants, but also against the “Ukrainian peasants — the foundation of the nation”.

Shapoval drew attention to the importance of the Holodomor for Ukrainians in their conceptualization of Ukrainian history and the development of their self-identity. He insisted on the anti-Ukrainian nature of the Kremlin’s policies during the famine years. “Petliurists” and “bourgeois nationalists” were held responsible for the difficulties in the forced grain deliveries to the state, and Ukrainian nationalists were blamed for the food shortages in the country. Stalin sent Postyshev to enforce grain deliveries and to purge the Ukrainian [Communist] Party and state cadres of Ukrainian “nationalists”. On December 14, 1932, Ukrainianization was condemned and curtailed in Ukraine, and the use of the Ukrainian language was forbidden in schools, newspapers, local administration in Kuban and other regions of the RSFSR inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians. Peasants in the Volga region were free to seek food outside their villages; Ukrainian peasants were forbidden to leave their villages.

From the Russian side, the most significant presentations were by Andrei Marchukov, kandidat of history and a research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Victor Kondrashin of the University of Penza and a noted specialist of the famine in Southern Russia. Both speakers, like the rest of the Russian participants, rejected the notion of a specific Ukrainian Holodomor and the notion of genocide against the Ukrainians. They reiterated the basic thesis, which seems to be universally accepted now in Russia that there was one famine for all Soviet peasants.

The main attack on the Ukrainian interpretation was delivered by Marchukov, who in the beginning of the year had published a long article in Rodina under the title “Operation ‘holodomor’,” in which he denounced the treatment of the famine by Ukrainian politicians and scholars. Marchukov again criticized the Ukrainian law, which obliges Ukrainian historians to treat the famine as genocide, and thus hampers free discussion. He complained about the politicization of the question by Ukraine and rejected Ukrainian claims on the present Russian Federation. Marchukov mocked Kulchytsky’s abandonment of his former socio-economic interpretation of the famine in favour of a national one, and makes fun of his inability to cope with the distinction between “ethnic” and “national” in his analysis.

Reaffirming that the famine was a tragedy of “the whole Soviet village”, Victor Kondrashin declared: “in our days, this tragedy should not divide, but unite us!” He considers discussions on who suffered more from the Stalinist regime “academically unproductive and morally dangerous”. The Penza historian does not dispute the figure of 3-3.5 million famine victims for Ukraine, but claims that it is balanced by the 3 million victims in the RSFSR (which then included Kazakhstan). He disregards the fact that the famine in the RSFSR struck primarily regions inhabited primarily by non-Russians (e.g. Ukrainians in Kuban) or by very large ethnic minorities.

The conference ended with a call to keep the famine discussion on a strictly scholarly level and subjected the documents held in Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian archives to objective analysis. The participants recognized the “superiority of historical facts over stereotypical constructions of political and ideological character”. The intentions are good, but the conference does not inspire confidence that they will be carried out. Some time after the conference, a confidential document made it known that Victor Kondrashin is preparing a collection of documents, selected with the expressed goal of demonstrating that the famine was “the same for all”.