The Holodomor was a terrible famine that plagued much of the Soviet Union during the years of 1932 and 1933. Ukrainians view it as an attempted genocide on their ethnicity by the Soviet government. The former Soviet government and the present Russian government deny that it was a deliberate genocide directed at the Ukrainian people. This paper aims to address specific questions that have arisen about this topic. For instance, how would have the genocide of the Ukrainian people benefited the Soviet government? Did the Soviet government do everything within its power to stop this famine? Did Ukrainians suffer an unequal proportion compared the rest of the regions within the Soviet Union? How did the Soviet government react to the famine? Did ethnic Russians also suffer during the famine? Lastly, how have the Ukrainian people viewed this incident as a part of their history?
How would have the genocide of the Ukrainian people benefited the Soviet Union? This is a question has been answered by the former president of Ukraine, Victor Yushchenko, in an article he wrote in 2007. In this article, he accuses the Soviet government of deliberately starving the Ukrainian people to " crush Ukraine’s national identity and its desire for self-determination. " The Ukrainian population was hugely a rural and pleasant one, and many of the peasants were rejecting Stalin's plan of collectivization. This obviously did not sit well with Stalin and his government; this led to many, some figures show around 1,000,000 Ukrainians, being forcefully shipped off to Siberia to fend for themselves, which more than not led to starvation or freezing to death. Yushchenko says that this stubbornness and was largely the reason Stalin started demanding “ astronomic grain requisition quotas that were impossible to meet and which left nothing for the local population to eat.” Yushchenko puts it in a manner where the Soviet government wanted to destroy the will of the Ukrainians through terrible starvation that was monitored by the government. This is, of course, a partial response to this question and the Russian government has a very different answer. During a publicized question and answer session in 2008, Vladimir Putin was asked a question about improving relations with Ukraine. Putin's response was a short but exciting one, he said this, "We do not raise far-fetched issues like the Holodomor (famine), politicizing these common problems from the past.” While this does not say anything directly about why the Soviet government would have benefited, it does say a lot about how the Russians view the Holodomor. This shows that Russian do not believe there was any reason the Soviet government would want to destroy the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainians are just publicizing this incident to create a sort of gap between themselves and the Russian people. During the fiftieth anniversary of the famine, a USSR official issued this statement in Canada, "Indeed the situation in Ukraine as well as in other parts of the USSR in 1932 was quite difficult. It was not as critical as portrayed in the West. And, of course, it was not because somebody wanted to make it worse, but because of some reasons, drought being the major one." This represents the view the Soviet government had towards why the Holodomor occurred.
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This official points out that drought was a primary cause of the starvations, not because of a deliberate attack on the Ukrainian people. This statement implies that the USSR thought nothing of intentionally punishing the Ukrainians because of their opposition to Soviet policies. If the Soviet government did not purposefully induce this famine on the Ukrainian people, then they would have surely done everything in their power to stop this massive starvation that was happening. In an article he wrote, James Perloff strongly disagrees with the idea the Soviet government did all they could to stop what was occurring. He argues such facts as in 1932 the Soviet Union increased grain quotas in Ukraine by forty-four percent, which was an unfeasible act to accomplish. This was an amount of grain that was far more than had ever been produced in Ukraine, even before the collectivization of farms. Perloff then argues that when Stalin realized his quotas were not being met he issued a very gruesome order, and that was the confiscation of all grain, including from households. Lastly, Perloff talks about how many Ukrainians hoped to escape this famine by either going to the cities in the hope of finding work where they could purchase some food, or immigrating to areas such as Poland and Romania because these areas were not nearly as severely affected. However, the Soviet government issued internal passports, which kept peasants from going to the cities without communist party approval and restricted regional movement to an extreme degree. With these facts present it is hard to believe that the Soviet government did all it could to stop the famine, but as there is a Soviet side to this story and that has some compelling arguments as well. Probably the best case for the Soviet government not holding anything back in trying to curb the famine is a letter Stalin wrote to Comrade Kaganovich. In this letter, Stalin concerns the situation in Ukraine and says "Things in Ukraine have hit rock bottom." He also realizes that "Unless we begin to straighten out the situation in Ukraine, we may lose Ukraine." This shows that Stalin is quite aware of the desperation that is going on in Ukraine; he then says this interesting statement, "We should be unstinting in providing money." This provides insight into the idea that at least Stalin did try to combat the ugly situation in Ukraine, even though it does not seem like it was beneficial.
The lack of effectiveness can be asked in the question of whether or not Ukrainians suffered an unequal proportion compared to the rest of the Soviet Union during these years of the famine. The answer to this question can be found in a chart that shows the Regional Mortality Data from 1930 to 1933. It is clear that the Soviet government knew that what was going on in Ukraine, and from Stalin’s letter to Comrade Kaganovich, it can be seen that Stalin wanted to sent money to Ukraine, but what exactly was the reaction of the Soviet government in Moscow to the famine that was plaguing Ukraine? Apart from the extensive denials by the government that any abnormal situation was going on in Ukraine, very little was done to cease the terrible famine. In fact, there is quite a lot of information to support the idea that the Soviet government took actions that only furthered the effect of the famine and directly aided in the deaths of many Ukrainians. A prominent example of this was the fact that Stalin kept international aid from going into Ukraine. In an article in The History Place, it is put this way, “I n Europe, America, and Canada, persons of Ukrainian descent and others responded to news reports of the famine by sending in food supplies. But Soviet authorities halted all food shipments at the border. It was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of famine and thus to refuse any outside assistance." The Soviet Union could not afford to have a famine, one that was either created or occurred naturally, on their hands because they were still trying to gain international recognition and influence. Essentially, the Soviet Union was forced to deny what was going on for fear that would only set back any progress they had made on the international level.
