The 1930–33 famine was a catastrophic, criminal failure of Soviet policy. It devastated all major grain-producing regions: Central Ukraine, the Volga, Urals, Kazakhstan, even parts of Western Siberia. 5–7 million excess deaths.
The idea that the Holodomor was a uniquely anti-Ukrainian ethnic genocide was popularized by the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada in the late 1970s — most of whom came from Western Ukraine, which wasn't affected by the famine at all.
This wasn't "Russians vs Ukrainians" or even "Bolsheviks vs Ukrainians" — it was state repression against peasants across the USSR.
Central Ukraine, the Volga, and Kazakhstan were hit hardest because they produced the grain. A poor harvest, combined with forced collectivization and brutal requisitioning, left those rural areas with nothing. Yes, to a certain extent it was "engineered" — as part of the dekulakization program.
At the same time, Stalin was actively promoting Ukrainian identity and language in urban areas through korenizatsiya. Ukrainian speakers were incentivized with better jobs, party admission, and educational opportunities. The Ukrainization of the Communist Party was dramatic: in 1920, Ukrainians made up 20.1% of Communists in the Ukrainian SSR; by 1925, it was 52.0%; by 1933, 60.0%.
I'm not defending the perpetrators of the famine in the slightest. It was horrific, and the Soviet leadership was responsible. But to claim that Stalin was conducting an ethnic genocide against Ukrainians — while actively promoting Ukrainization in the ethnically-diverse Ukrainian SSR — isn't just historically wrong. It's absurd.
Yet thanks to Cold War agitprop and a diaspora of sieg-heiling ethnonarcissists in Toronto, the myth persists.
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Tom |
