Also would like to add the new warning/infraction system is in effect.
http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?p=88548#post88548
Read here.
In Russian Empire or USSR there were no such thing as ‘ruling nation’ or ‘title nation’ AT ALL. No one ‘ruled’ Ukranians, Tatars, Belorussians or Russians, because all they are Russians in more wide sense. No one endangered Ukrainian culture because it was integral part of Russian culture, Russian culture is unimaginable without Ukrainian, Belorussian, etc. People even today often call themselves ‘Russians’ even if they hair are black as coal (classic Russian look is white hair, blue eyes). Life in Ukraine was exactly as it was in Russia. It was absolutely no difference of rights or anything depending where you live - in Kiev or Kazan aside from more warm or more harsh climate and local cultural traditions. Ukranians or any other race were never a defeated or ‘lesser’ nation. The question of who was lesser or who was major in Russia is absurd - it was multi-national in all times with no nation being less or more ‘equal’.
Much respect to you! It is very difficult to accept something so contrary to your initial opinion.
Oh, that’s a another fascinating, rosy contention.
So why did all of these nations bolt this wonderful confederation of tolerance and goodwill that was the U.S.S.R. the minute, no the second, Communism ended?
The intellectual background and rationale for current archival Ucrainica retrieval efforts abroad are quite different. Today the aim is to open Ukrainian historical and cultural research in the broadest possible extent, and to reunite the Ukrainian diaspora with the now independent homeland. Present efforts and the rationale behind them should be seen first and foremost as stemming from the renaissance of a national historical and cultural identity in Ukraine in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Freed from the narrow shackles of Soviet ideology and its concomitant cultural iron curtain, Ukrainian scholars and cultural leaders have been acutely aware of the need to rewrite their political and cultural history based on newly opened archives at home and access to Western interpretive literature and divergent methodologies. Equally important, they are anxious to redefine their own historiographic and cultural context following decades of a political regime that sought to redefine Ukrainian culture in a narrow Soviet and often russified Soviet image. Today, Ukrainian intellectuals of all shades in the political spectrum are seeking reintegration with the “lost” or exiled Ukrainian history and culture in emigration.
Nick your last post was deleted because it was nothing but flaming. Watch yourself. I just put the warning system in effect today…I dont want to use it for the first time today too.
Your mind ended…
In 1991 absolutly most of peoples of USSR voted in referendum for the saving ot Union state in territory USSR, but native elites wished a power for yourself.
After the separation of national republics USSR disappeared.
NAtional elite got its own little “kingdoms” , but all the simple peoples losed very much.
Condition of life was made worst , appeared bloody national conflicts …
Of course there were problems which doomed USSR, but there were no racial problems or segregation at all. There is much less differences between Ukrainians and Russians than between americans which ancestors came from Ireland or americans which ancestors came from Britain for example. While you can recognize Irish people by their look, it is impossible to tell who is Ukrainian and who is Russian by look. Accent may help, but Ukrainian accent is identical to accent of South Russia. And all this vice-versa - Ukrainian can came to any town in Russia and feel right at home. Almost every family have relatives in Russia.
Link you’ve provided - sorry, but this is typical ukraine nationalists opinion. There is a party in Ukraine today which praise UNA para-military forces which fought on Hitler’s side. The Ukraine today is divided country - anti-russian opinion exists almost only in western part, Galicia (which was part of Poland immediately before the war) and in capital while south and east are fully pro-russian. Because of this there is a state of a permanent political crisis during last years - the country is divided and people despise each other depending on their political opinion. Tough situation.
BTW, my grandmother and grandfather are from Ukraine, they’ve lived in Charkov before war and were evacuated to Siberia. Charkov itself was completely destroyed and rebuilt from scratch.
Listen to Jasa - his ancestors were from Ukraine. We’re not lying to you.
How clever! Is this considered flaming too Gen. Sandstorm? After the upteenth warning and anti-Semitic baiting by this fool? :rolleyes:
In 1991 absolutly most of peoples of USSR voted in referendum for the saving ot Union state in territory USSR, but native elites wished a power for yourself.
Really, I guess everybody was happy under a Communist dictatorship, but yet it fell apart, and only the “native elites” that didn’t want back in?
After the separation of national republics USSR disappeared.
NAtional elite got its own little “kingdoms” , but all the simple peoples losed very much.
Many simple people did lose from what I gathered. But they didn’t exactly live well under the USSR, and the state had been losing money and had had serious economic troubles since at least the late 1960s. And I thought they attempted to maintain the Commonwealth of Independent States for a while??
Condition of life was made worst , appeared bloody national conflicts …
Perhaps. But conditions never seemed all that great previously. And conflicts where appearing all over the USSR anyways.
This is simply not true. Many Jews and some of the non-Slavic races claimed that there was discrimination.
There is much less differences between Ukrainians and Russians than between americans which ancestors came from Ireland or americans which ancestors came from Britain for example. While you can recognize Irish people by their look, it is impossible to tell who is Ukrainian and who is Russian by look. Accent may help, but Ukrainian accent is identical to accent of South Russia. And all this vice-versa - Ukrainian can came to any town in Russia and feel right at home. Almost every family have relatives in Russia.
Perhaps, but there is definitely a separate identity, and everything I’ve read states that perhaps the Ukrainians may have a bit a difference of opinion on this. But nobody is from the Ukraine here apparently to tell us first hand.
And I believe a better analogy for Americans would be Canada, which I will discuss a little later in this post.
Link you’ve provided - sorry, but this is typical ukraine nationalists opinion.
Funny, but many would say exactly the same thing some of the very pro-Soviet points of view presented here.
There is a party in Ukraine today which praise UNA para-military forces which fought on Hitler’s side. The Ukraine today is divided country - anti-russian opinion exists almost only in western part, Galicia (which was part of Poland immediately before the war) and in capital while south and east are fully pro-russian. Because of this there is a state of a permanent political crisis during last years - the country is divided and people despise each other depending on their political opinion. Tough situation.
Yes well, the link was too an official Ukrainian gov’t site. And I think their opinion may in fact have more basis in fact that there is a seperate identity and language.
And I think I also read (quickly) that they cited Ukrainians that held positions of power with the USSR at the time. And it didn’t quite strike me as pro-Nazi.
I don’t think you have the right to speak for them either, no more so than I have the right to speak for Canadians. I actually have a very slight Canadian accent in my dialect, since I live in what is a border city. But ask a Canadian what they would think of being ruled by Americans, and they’ll probably hurl insults at you despite being known as very polite, well-spoken people overall.
BTW, my grandmother and grandfather are from Ukraine, they’ve lived in Charkov before war and were evacuated to Siberia. Charkov itself was completely destroyed and rebuilt from scratch.
Listen to Jasa - his ancestors were from Ukraine. We’re not lying to you.
I’m sorry to hear your grandparents lost their home.
Comunism dictatorship was in your imagination.
I live in USSR 13 years and me and my parents never see the “dictatorship”.
And more ,in 1991 in the USSR was more free society then today in some post-USSR “independent” states.
Many simple people did lose from what I gathered. But they didn’t exactly live well under the USSR, and the state had been losing money and had had serious economic troubles since at least the late 1960s. And I thought they attempted to maintain the Commonwealth of Independent States for a while??
Commonwealth of Independent States is shit in comparition of USSR. CIS couldn’t capable normaly to solve the problems, because native elited didn’t wish to act in common rules.
And don’t tell for us please about life in USSR.
You know it just from reading of sources.( which was political subjective).
You are wery fun in comparition with Jasa, he is really know the live in USSR and Russia.
You are just senseless apologist 
Nobody of russians try to speak for the ukraines.
But Eastern ukrainian peoples mostly wish to live in friendship with russians. And they are carefully listen the russian oppinion about situation in Ukraine.
Personaly i have a relatives in Ukraine (in Charkov too) and i troubled for its fate.
And i absolutly don’t need the advices in example with Canada.
Okay, you are correct. There was no dictatorship, and the Premiers were elected every few years and served until they died or were relieved. And BTW, freedom is slavery, war is peace.
Commonwealth of Independent States is shit in comparition of USSR. CIS couldn’t capable normaly to solve the problems, because native elited didn’t wish to act in common rules.
And don’t tell for us please about life in USSR.
Chevan, I’ve never tried to tell anybody what their “life was like.” Indeed, Jasa and I were discussing a country that he does not live in, and events that happened over 70-years ago. I doubt, unless he’s in his 80s which I also doubt, that he has any first hand recollections of the events of this discussion.
You know it just from reading of sources.( which was political subjective).
You are wery fun in comparition with Jasa, he is really know the live in USSR and Russia.
You are just senseless apologist
Jasa lived in the Ukraine during the famines? Served in WWII? Interesting.
And Chevan, I am truthfully not trying to be a prick when I say the following. I realize that I have to forgive your diction because as it was pointed out to me, English is your second or third or whatever language. And I believe you said you use a translator to assist you, but much unlike your friends and fellow Russians, you come across as immature in many of your responses. Kindly point out where I have “apologised” for any negative historical events?
I can agree with this wholeheartedly, of course Ukrainians and Russians want to live together peacefully, with mutually beneficial defense and economic pacts.
And i absolutly don’t need the advices in example with Canada.
That was a response directed towards Sneaksie in regards too his use of examples…
It was not actual for simple soviet peoples.
Really ,soviet life was a little dull (neither political murders nor terrorists nor of homosexuals on the TV) but as a whole everything was normally.
Chevan, I’ve never tried to tell anybody what their “life was like.” Indeed, Jasa and I were discussing a country that he does not live in, and events that happened over 70-years ago.
in contrast to you, Jasa could have a close contacts with peoples who lived in USSR in past.
Jasa lived in the Ukraine during the famines? Served in WWII? Interesting.
No he didn’t. But he know the a lot of live Ukrainians whom ancestors told them about famies in Ukraine.
I have a lot of elderly relevants , who remember much more details which you ever never could find in net.
You could tell to Lancer about aborigens in Australia having the same the resault as you told for us about “Comunism dictatorship” in USSR.
Kindly point out where I have “apologised” for any negative historical events?
And where was i as “apologised”, as you named me.
It’s not pro-Nazi, it’s official after all. But most Ukrainian nationalists claim that UPA was fighting communism together with Hitler and are proud for it. More calmer nationalists say that it fought against Red Army AND Wermacht (no, actually).
I don’t think you have the right to speak for them either, no more so than I have the right to speak for Canadians. I actually have a very slight Canadian accent in my dialect, since I live in what is a border city. But ask a Canadian what they would think of being ruled by Americans, and they’ll probably hurl insults at you despite being known as very polite, well-spoken people overall.
I have many relatives in Ukraine. Again, it’s not the case of who ruled who. Canada is not so good example, it was never integral part of USA. It’s more like Texas nationalists would claim that they were opressed by ‘Washingtonians’. Some of Ukrainians may find my words insulting, but it’s not the case. Texas undoubtedly has it’s own cultural uniquely features which together with other states culture and traditions form american culture and the american society as a whole. In tzarist Russia or USSR it was exactly like this, only borders between ‘states’ were far less visible (in USA different states may have different laws - unthinkable in USSR). There are even nationalists in Texas too i heard, but of course no one listen to them seriously. To summarize, modern Texas in USA is like Ukraine republic in USSR in terms of relations between it and other states. Texas was even independent state in early history of USA if i recall correctly.
I’m sorry to hear your grandparents lost their home.
Appreciate it. Actually they were lucky - they’ve lost their home when many lost their lives (their firstborn child died though).
All of the sources I provided detail how the Nazis advanced the famine genocide claim.
As I stated before, the Nazis had their own press and propaganda machine BEFORE THEY CAME TO POWER. Hitler contemplated German domination of Ukraine in Mein Kampf, written long before they came to power.
Also if I were you I wouldn’t talk about “ignorance” since you certainly didn’t win any points in the “Knowing about Ukraine” event.
Logical fallacy, assuming that the methodology of these two forms of “revisionism” is the same, and assuming that the amount of evidence for each genocide is the same. The Holocaust has produced thousands of photos for example, while the famine genocide rests on a handful of photos that have long since been proven to have originated in 1921-22.
So, much like Katyn, it was all the Nazis fault. But the guy who gives me selective sources written by communists and hack journalists is the one I’m supposed to trust?
Also if I were you I wouldn’t talk about “ignorance” since you certainly didn’t win any points in the “Knowing about Ukraine” event.
Logical fallacy, assuming that the methodology of these two forms of “revisionism” is the same, and assuming that the amount of evidence for each genocide is the same. The Holocaust has produced thousands of photos for example, while the famine genocide rests on a handful of photos that have long since been proven to have originated in 1921-22.
So what we’ve learned from this thread is that the independent Ukrainian gov’t are liars. And the Russian gov’t can be trusted to tell the truth related to actions they committed as the dominant power in the SU?
And again, do you care to address the declassified NKVD documents? Or is everything you say just ass-covering crap for your red-fascist hero Stalin?
Funny, but here is what a site that you have admitted as reliable about InfoUkes:
[b]Ukraine
InfoUkes: The Artificial Famine in Ukraine 1932-33
The InfoUkes Introduction:[/b]
"A Man-Made Famine raged through Ukraine, the ethnic-Ukrainian region of northern Caucasus, and the lower Volga River region in 1932-33. This resulted in the death of between 7 to 10 million people, mainly Ukrainians. This was instigated by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his henchman Lazar Kaganovich. The main goal of this artificial famine was to break the spirit of the Ukrainian farmer/peasant and to force them into collectivization. The famine was also used as an effective tool to break the renaissance of Ukrainian culture that was occuring under approval of the communist government in Ukraine. Moscow perceived this as a threat to a Russo-Centric Soviet rule and therefore acted to crush this cultural renaissance in a most brutal manner.
In 1932, the Soviets increased the grain procurement quota for Ukraine by 44%. They were aware that this extraordinarly high quota would result in a grain shortage, therefore resulting in the inability of the Ukrainian peasant to feed themselves. Soviet law was quite clear in that no grain could be given to feed the peasants until the quota was met. Communist party officials with the aid of military trrops and NKVD secret police units were used to move against peasants who may be hiding grain from the Soviet government. Even worse, an internal passport system was implemented to restrict movements of Ukrainian peasants so that they could not travel in search of food. Ukrainian grain was collected and stored in grain elevators that were guarded by military units & NKVD secret police units while Ukrainians were starving in the immediate area. The actions of this Moscow instigated action was a deliberate act of genocide against the Ukrainian peasant.
These series of pages are intended to educate the general populace about this little known event in Ukrainian history. InfoUkes hopes to add to this series of pages in the upcoming year."
http://www.nizkor.org/other-sites/genocides.html#UKRAINE
So, are the Holocaust sites also colluding with ex-Nazis/sympathizers?
BTW, your source is shit! Douglas Tottle’s sole journalistic qualification is that he edited the very lame United Steel Workers Journal, and wrote for a newspaper that is considered a crackpot joke in the U.S. (The Village Voice :lol: ) Incidentally, the USWs also is considered a joke of a very week union, not even recognized in many U.S. cities since there are very few steel foundries left in America, as I should know, since I have some ties to the U.S. labor movement in my line of work.
So, we’re supposed to believe the ramblings of some crack-pot buffoon with possible Communist sympathies who has questionable scholarship credentials? Yet he questions serious academics at Ivy-League U.S. Universities? And ask any American conservative if they regard Harvard or Columbia Universities as the bastion of rightist fascism? They’ll laugh in your face! LMFAO!!
Your posts are becoming more and more feeble…
THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FAMINE-GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE
FOR THE RECORD: Remarks by Prof. Mark von Hagen at Columbia
Following are the opening remarks of Prof. Mark von Hagen at the International Conference at Columbia University on “The Man-Made Great Famine in Ukraine of 1932-1933 (Holodomor)” held on Monday, November 10.
Welcome to Columbia University, its School of International and Public Affairs and the Ukrainian Studies Program of the Harriman Institute. We are honored by your participation; many members of the audience are no less experts on the subject of our conference than the formal panelists, so we look forward to an exciting day of discussions and exchange.
The Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, Kazakstan and parts of Russia was a particularly stark demonstration of the brutality of the Soviet regime and how far it had betrayed its Social-Democratic commitment to creating better lives for the peasants and workers of the Soviet Union.
The goal of collectivization, in whose name the Famine was tolerated and exacerbated by consciously murderous measures, was acknowledged even by Soviet sources, at least after Stalin’s death, to have been a colossal economic and political failure. Not only did the wasteful and ill-prepared collectivization drives set back agricultural productivity and turn the peasantry into bitter enemies of the Soviet regime; another important casualty of the collectivization and famine was the Soviet citizenry’s right to a truthful and open discussion about all important social or political issues, a trend that had been emerging, it is true, from the first days after the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. The NKVD rose to a position of immense power during the collectivization campaigns and insisted on ever higher levels of classification, secrecy and censorship in all public documents and speeches, culminating in an important sense in the 55-year denial of the man-made Famine in Ukraine and elsewhere in the Soviet Union.
Compounding this conspiracy of silence ruthlessly enforced by the Soviet government was the complicity of many governments of “civilized” peoples and the reporters of the foreign press in Moscow, most notoriously Walter Duranty of The New York Times. But, sadly, professional historians reinforced this silence with their own denials until recently, despite the overwhelming evidence of oral history testimonies recorded from survivors and eyewitnesses in the Ukrainian diaspora populations of North America.
Much has changed in the past dozen years. Ukrainian state independence and the parallel declarations of independence by Ukrainian historians from Moscow narratives and silences, the opening of previously classified party, state and police archives - have made possible publications that document the Famine and break the decades of officially imposed silence in the country for which this tragic event has the most political, moral and social significance. Restoring the truth about the Famine-Genocide is one of the central tasks in reshaping Ukrainian historical and civic consciousness and in its de-Sovietization. Accordingly, Ukrainian parliamentary deputies organized hearings earlier this year which resulted in resolutions demanding that the Ukrainian government work with the international community to gain recognition for this tragedy as a criminal violation of human rights and lives.
A new generation of North American and European historians has been responsive to the changes in archival access and to the revision of the historical record by our Ukrainian colleagues and has dramatically recast the terms of debate on the Famine.
Our conference today is the first full-fledged exploration of the political, historical and socio-cultural aspects of the Famine-Genocide at Columbia University, but ours is not unique. Similar conferences have been held or are being planned at our sister institutions across North America - Harvard, Stanford, the Kennan Institute, the University of Toronto, and others. All these institutions have committed significant resources to Ukrainian studies and all acknowledge the centrality of the history of the Famine-Genocide to an understanding of Ukraine’s fate in the 20th century.
These conferences demonstrate that, for all the new documents, indeed thanks to the flood of new information, there is still room for scholars, political and civic leaders, and concerned citizens to debate important aspects of the Famine-Genocide: its relationship to assaults on the Ukrainian cultural and political elites, its ties to parallel famines in Russian regions and Kazakstan, even the proper name for this catastrophe, whether Famine-Genocide, man-made or artificial Famine, or some other variant.
This fact nonetheless testifies to a new phase in our understanding of the history of this tragic episode and comes just as the original generation of survivors and eyewitnesses to the Famine-Genocide are themselves becoming silenced through death and illness. The Ukrainian hromada abroad has been an important, indeed very important, part of the story of today’s conference. The persistence patience, and courage of a generation of survivors - and now their children and grandchildren - has preserved the precious collective memory of these events and published research based on the available archives of foreign governments and international organizations. That generation belatedly joined by those survivors inside Ukraine itself who could speak the truth publicly only after independence, are the human voices that have kept this tragic history from complete oblivion over the decades.
These, in short, are the concerns and issues that we have tried to bring together in our conference today and which also reflect the generous contributions of our many partners in this unique collaboration - from the hromada civic and scholarly organizations, the Shevchenko Scientific Society, the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in America, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, and the Ukrainian Studies Fund; the Ukrainian government and its Permanent Mission to the United Nations; leading archivists from Ukraine’s State Committee on Archives; and the private and non-profit sector, in the persons of Primary Source Microfilms/Gale Group and the foundation of Yaroslav Chelak.
Once again, welcome from the faculty, staff and students of Columbia University and best wishes for a productive conference.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, November 30, 2003, No. 48, Vol. LXXI
THE LAST STAND OF THE UKRAINIAN FAMINE-GENOCIDE
By Dr. Roman Serbyn, Professor of Russian and East European History
University of Quebec, Montreal, Canada
The Ukrainian Canadian magazine, February, 1989
Concluding his review of Douglas Tottle’s book “Fraud, Famine and Fascism,” Wilfred Szczesny writes: “Members of the general public who want to know about the famine, its extent and causes, and about the motives and techniques of those who would make this tragedy into something other than what it was will find Tottle’s work invaluable.” (The Ukrainian Canadian, April, 1988, p.24) In the era of glasnost, Szczesny could have rendered his readers no greater disservice.
For an editor-in-chief of a Ukrainian magazine to invite people to consult Tottle’s tract is as appropriate as for a publisher of a Jewish periodical to recommend “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century” by the Holocaust denier A.R. Butz. lf in Szczesny’s statement quoted above the reader substitutes “Holocaust” for “famine” and “Butz” for “Tottle”, the affront to the reader’s dignity in both cases will become apparent. Tottle is no more interested in discovering the truth about the forced starvation of Ukrainians than Butz about the gassing of Jews.
Tottle is a self-confessed famine-genocide denier. No longer able to negate the famine as such, Tottle questions its genocidal character. Traditional famine-denial has been updated to famine-genocide denial, but the essence of the ideological trappings is the same. Today’s famine-genocide deniers are the spiritual heirs of the first famine negators, Stalin and those who helped him carry out the most heinous of crimes against the Ukrainian nation or to deny its existence.
With his book Douglas Tottle has become a sort of guru to a strange collection of latterday famine-genocide deniers. He has inspired militant articles by Jeff Coplon (“In Search of a Soviet Holocaust”, Village Voice, 12 January, 1988); Wilfred Szczesny (“Fraud, Famine and Fascism”, The Ukrainian Canadian, April, 1988); and Donne Flanagan (“The Ukrainian Famine: Fact or Fiction”, McGill Daily, 22 November, 1988). How vile and trite is the campaign of the famine-genocide deniers should become clear from the following three examples of how Tottle practices the misdeeds of which he accuses others.
First, let us consider the photographs of the famine. Tottle latches on to them as if they were the main proof of the historicity of the tragedy and the principle argument for its classification as genocide. Tottle does this because he thinks that the photographs form a weak link in the famine-genocide story: break this link and the whole structure will collapse. Well, this is not so. The famine has a solid documentary basis (documents published in the West and in the Soviet Union) of which the photographs form a very minor (and I might add, dispensable) component. There are few photographs from the 1932-33 famine and we could hardly expect otherwise, since the totalitarian regime wanted to keep the famine hidden and took the necessary measures to ensure this.
Many more photographs have come down to us from the earlier Soviet famine of 1921-23. Some of these pictures were eventually used in connection with the second famine and this fact provided Tottle with his basic argument against the famine-genocide: photographs depicting a natural famine of 1921-22 in Russia are used as proof of man-made starvation in Ukraine in 1932-33. To make his accusation stick, Tottle resorts to a mixture of irrelevant truths, half-truths and outright lies.
Tottle constantly refers to the Russian famine of 1921-22, but never mentions the contemporaneous famine in Ukraine. Yet most of Tottle’s “illustrative” material is taken from Ukraine and not Russia. On page 32, Tottle reproduces three title pages of what he describes as “publications devoted to the Russian famine of 1921-22”, even though two of them deal only with Ukraine. One is “Holod na Ukraini,” an excellent documentary by Ivan Herasymovych based on personal observations and containing excerpts from the Soviet Ukrainian press and a number of photographs. Tottle identifies the second text (the reduced reproduction is almost illegible to the naked eye) as “Dr. Fridjof Nansen’s International Committee for Russian Relief, Information No.22, Geneva, April 30, 1922”, but fails to give the title of the report contained on that page. It reads: “Famine Situation in Ukrania”. With the help of a magnifying glass the reader can decipher the following revealing information about the famine conditions in Ukraine, sent by Nansen’s representative from Kharkiv on 22 March, 1922:
"(N)ot before the 11th of January of this year could the goubernia of Donetz stop their obligatory relief work for the Volga district and begin to take care with all their forces of their own famine problem, at a time when already more than every tenth person in the Donetz was without bread. In the beginning of March this year, you could still see, in the famine-stricken goubernia Nicolaev (Mykolaiv), placards with 'Working masses of Nikolaev (sic), to the help of the starving Volga district!' The goubernia of Nicolaev itself had at the same time 700,000 starving people, about half the population. On my way to Ukrania I sought information in Moscow about the situation from presumably well informed persons. They told me that in Ukrania the situation was very bad, about half a million people starving. In reality the number was more than six times greater."
Further on, the envoy continues:
"The whole of the 4 goubernias of Odessa, Nicolaev, Yekaterinioslav (Katerynoslav), and Donetz, as well as the southern parts of Krementchoug, Poltava and Kharkov, are stricken by famine. Of a total population of about 16 million in these goubernias, between four and five millions are now starving, and before the new harvest the number will perhaps have risen to between six and seven millions. Almost the whole population of Ukrania is suffering to a certain extent from lack of food and all the conveniences of life, but the above mentioned millions are literally starving to death." (p.2)
In a follow-up report, dated 13 April, 1922, and reproduced in the same document, we read:
"Five million persons are now without food and probably more than ten thousand die daily of starvation... In a word, the famine has reached such dimensions and such insignificant relief is given, that the starving population loses every hope and dies." (p.30)
What Nansen’s man was describing was the first man-made famine in Ukraine which lasted from 1921 to 1923 (and not 1922) and took 1.5 to 2 million lives. In spite of the drought in its southern provinces, Ukraine had enough grain to feed its population, provided the foodstuffs were kept in the country and not exported. But during these two years Soviet authorities removed enough agricultural produce from Ukraine to feed several times the population which died from hunger. Ukrainian grain was sent to Russia both years to feed the cities and the famished population on the Volga. (A severe famine was also ravaging southern Russia, especially the Volga region.) The second year it was also sold in Western Europe. Aid offered by foreign countries was accepted immediately for the Volga region but let into Ukraine only eight months later.
Since both famines in Ukraine were manmade, it was quite legitimate to use in the film Harvest of Despair photographs from the famine of the 1920’s along with those of the 1930’s. The weakness of the film lies not in these photographs but in the insufficient explanation the film gave of the first famine. This shortcoming has no bearing on the authenticity of the famine-genocide of the 1930’s. To suggest the opposite, as Tottle, Coplon, Flannagan and Szczesny do, is to display ignorance or lack of intellectual integrity.
Second, let us see how even the great Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky is made to serve the famine-genocide deniers’ propaganda machine. Szczesny writes:
"Tottle cites a number of historians and other writers whose works contradict the claim that the famine was a deliberate act of genocide, including Isaac Mazepa amd M. Hrushevsky, both of whom discuss the causes of the famine with no suggestion that it was a deliberate effort to destroy the Ukrainian people."
Taken at face value, Szczesny’s contention sounds serious. If Ukraine’s foremost historian could analyze the famine and find no deliberate action against the Ukrainian people, then surely his findings carry more weight than the claims of lesser scholars. And yet to anyone the least familiar with contemporary Ukrainian it sounds incredible that Hrushevsky should have written such things about the famine. What are the facts?
Cont’d