By Zoltán Dujisin
PRAGUE, Dec 13 2007 (IPS)

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has been spearheading the country’s efforts to see the world recognise Ukraine’s 1932-1933 famine as an “act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.” Russia begs to disagree.

The Ukrainian famine remains a highly controversial and politicised issue: historians, politicians and citizens are still at odds over its death toll, and on whether to call it an ethnic genocide perpetrated by Soviet authorities.

The famine controversy has been exploited by Western-leaning Ukrainian politicians to score votes with the national-minded electorate, while politicians close to Russia have attempted to ignore or play down the topic.

The Ukrainian famine, or Holodomor (Hunger Plague), as Ukrainians refer to it, claimed between 2.6 and 3.5 million lives according to most serious academic estimates, although Ukrainian politicians and the media have mentioned numbers as high as 10 million.

In all 81 percent of the victims of the Ukrainian famine are believed to have been ethnic Ukrainians.

But besides the Holodomor a wider famine affected other regions of the Soviet Union, particularly parts of Russia and Kazakhstan.

After the Ukrainian parliament passed a resolution in 2006 declaring the famine a Soviet-led act of genocide against the Ukrainian people, parliaments in a dozen countries followed suit, though this view is far from being consensual.

The debate adds another thorn to the already complicated post-Soviet Russian-Ukrainian relations, and also to intra-Ukrainian relations where a sharp division prevails between the nationalist-minded West and the Eastern population that feels connected to Russia.

Critical voices from Russia have claimed that the Ukrainian authorities’ efforts are an insult to the non-ethnic Ukrainian victims of the famine that they say affected the entire Soviet Union.

Russia has officially denied that the Ukrainian famine constitutes an act of genocide, and opposes its politicisation.

“Declaring the tragic events of those years ‘an act of genocide’ against the Ukrainian people amounts to a one-sided distortion of history to suit modern opportunist political-ideological directives,” reads a Nov. 19 statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry. “Apart from everything else, this insults the memory of the victims of other nationalities who died during the famine.”

But Yushchenko says international recognition of the famine as genocide would constitute another step in preventing such events, and insists his move is not motivated by anti-Russian considerations.

“It is clear to me that Russia or the Russian people should not be held responsible for this,” the President told Ukrainian television last month. “If we look at the causes of the tragedy of 1932-33, we will find the only perpetrator – Stalin’s Communist regime.”

During the 70th anniversary of the famine in 2003, the United Nations approved a joint declaration which described the Holodomor as a “great tragedy” – a compromise term which was then accepted by Russia, Ukraine and the major Western powers.

However, many Western-leaning Ukrainian politicians now want the UN and foreign parliaments to recognise the Holodomor as genocide.

Those opposed to the usage of the term point out that the famine did not affect cities, but only rural areas, making the ethnically-charged expression technically incorrect.

The President, who defends the controversial victim toll of 10 million, has also prepared a bill envisaging that those who deny the Holocaust or the man-made nature of the famine should be held criminally liable.

“I am convinced that it will be a good example of ensuring that two major tragedies, one of which took the life of five million people and the second about 10 million people, on one hand will have international status, and on the other, bring clear-cut limits of accountability,” Yushchenko told the press.

The bill, which will soon be submitted to parliament, provides for fines of up to 1,000 dollars and prison penalties of up to four years.

On a recent state visit to Israel, the Ukrainian President asked the Israeli parliament to recognise the Holodomor as genocide so as to more effectively fight a totalitarian mentality.

“The fact that many Ukrainian public figures link the Holocaust and the Holodomor, presenting them as similar, is a political statement rather than a well thought through scholarly position,” Maria Falina, historian and research fellow at the Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany told IPS.

“There is a point in saying that extermination of Ukrainians was not the ultimate goal of the Soviet state, as was the case with the Jews and Nazi Germany.”

But supporters of the ethnic genocide thesis argue that the famine was preceded by a period of Soviet repression against Ukrainian national culture, and see continuity in the two events. They believe Moscow singled out Ukraine, and interpret the artificial famine as part of a Soviet policy of thwarting Ukrainian national aspirations.

This conclusion was supported by a United States Government Commission which investigated the event during the Cold War, and today the U.S. officially calls the Holodomor an act of genocide.

Nevertheless, during the 1930s, U.S. authorities chose not to recognise the reality of the famine in spite of reports by European embassies, allegedly due to its interest in establishing diplomatic relations with Moscow.

Only in the last couple of decades has Ukrainian society begun to acknowledge and debate the famine, and Yushchenko has declared 2008 the famine commemoration year.

Among the measures expected by the President are the compilation of memory books and a list of victims, the clean-up of their burial places, and the dismantling of monuments celebrating Soviet officials who helped organise the famine.

A competition will also be held for the best book and best film devoted to the theme, and there are plans to open a large museum on the famine.

But some initiatives from Ukraine have angered Russia: sectors of Ukrainian society, especially those who see the defunct Soviet Union as an organisation that advanced Russian interests, have demanded an official apology from the large neighbour.

A public organisation which goes under the name “Patriots of Ukraine” went as far as demanding an apology from Ukraine’s Russian and Jewish communities, and moral and financial compensation from Russia and Israel. The organisation says ethnic Jews constituted two thirds of the Stalin-era secret police staff, the rest being composed by Russians.

Whereas in Ukraine the commonly held view is that Soviet authorities intentionally worsened the situation, some historians have pointed out that the famine was aggravated by drought and by the initial resistance of the Ukrainian peasantry to collectivisation efforts.

“The position of the majority of Russian scholars is that the famine was an unfortunate coincidence and not a planned policy directed against Ukrainians per se, as other regions suffered as well,” says Falina.

“On the other hand, pretending that there was no harm done is highly hypocritical, but for Russian public opinion this is more of a Russian national question than a Ukrainian issue,” she told IPS.

Historians have for long debated whether the famine was prompted by natural causes or was the result of Stalinist collectivisation policies, though currently most modern experts agree that while natural causes worsened the situation, the man-made explanation is more correct.

The initially voluntary collectivisation soon became obligatory as Soviet authorities, concerned over low production from the Ukrainian lands and widespread opposition from the local peasantry, began sending officials and activists to accelerate the process and suppress resistance.

Collectively punishing villages that were perceived as non-cooperative, Soviet officials applied severe measures such as confiscation of agricultural products and financial resources, and a ban on trade and the supply of goods to the regions concerned.

Authorities also set up barricades to prevent exodus of farmers whose situation was worsened by the 1931 drought, which official Soviet historiography blamed for the catastrophe.

Soviet authorities, initially denying the famine and preventing foreigners from accessing the region, eventually reacted to the seriousness of the famine, especially after pressure from regional party committees. Due largely to a lack of resources, aid was insufficient and had limited impact.

Excerpt: