THE UKRAINE: Scale of the “orange” genocide have exceeded the USSR human losses during the 1930s starvation
Today, the Ukraine is an absolute world leader of the demographical decline. During fifteen years of independence, its population declined for 6 million people (12% of population). Ukrainian death rates are three times bigger then Russian death rates of the 90s. “The Economist” magazine forecasted that by the middle of 21st century population of the country will decrease for 43 percents. There would be 28 million of ethnic Ukrainians all over the world — this is less than by the end of the Holodomor. These numbers caused Ukrainian publicist V. Kovalev to make shocking but still fair conclusion: “In 1932-33 the Ukrainian nation starved, but now it goes through the genocide”.
Equal in their troubles
On the 28th of November the Ukraine was celebrating the regular anniversary of the Great starvation of 1932-33. This date gave the rise to another flash of the ideological polemics that electrified the Internet community. As usual, fanatic followers of the radical versions are not going to take historical facts or the reasonable arguments into the consideration.
Numerous members of the Ukrainian forums sincerely believe that their republic (as well as the rest of the Ukrainian villages outside of the USSR1) was cordoned off by the troops that watched over the locals, so that “no one would be able to break away and save himself”. The most furious ones went as far as saying that “the bread was moved out aboard the barges and then was drown in the Black Sea”. This was allegedly done in order to destroy Ukrainians as a nation. The opposite side (usually sticking to the communist ideology), in their turn tend to find the persons responsible for the starvation exclusively among the starved people themselves. According to them, self-employed farmers, those lone wolves, grudged to give the working cattle to the collective farms, so they’ve killed the oxen and there were no cattle to plough the fields with. Having failed to break the fresh ground they’ve ran out of bread. So to say, “They’ve died because of their own greed”.
Finally, we have to watch at the struggle of the ideological myths rather than to the search of truth. There’s a risk of ending up with a Day of fiction and nonsense rather than a commemoration Day of grieve and remembrance — common for Russians and Ukrainians.
It would be an absurdity to refuse that the Holodomor was the greatest humanitarian tragedy of the peacetime history of the Soviet Union (and, perhaps, in the history of all Eastern Slavs as well). Scale of this catastrophe has been confirmed by the Soviet State statistics committee long time ago (you may refer to the paper-works of Darsky, Urlanis, Harkova etc.) Number of the Great Famine victims exceeds the combined human losses of 1937 and all the other years of repressions. Actually, you could have guessed about it, using the Soviet statistics. For example, here’s the data from the “Great Soviet Encyclopedia” for 1972-78:
National mentalities of Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians are so alike that the birth rate of these nations in the first half of 20th century was practically identical (mind that it was considerably bigger than the birthrate of other Russian-USSR nations, in particular the Muslim ones). And how can you explain marked difference of the natural population increase in Byelorussia, the Ukraine and the RSFSR2? The main reason is the different death rate. We may see, that comparing to Byelorussia, Russian Federation “lacked” about 12.5% or about 12 million people — the Ukraine, at the same time, “fell short” for 17.5% or 6 million people. About a half of this “shortage” is referred to the direct (died) and the indirect (not born) victims of the Holodomor — unclassified archives have confirmed this data. According to the data given by Leonid Darsky — the one that State statistics committee had already made public in 1991 — in 1933 population of the Soviet Union declined for 7 million people (for your reference: in 1937 it increased for 3 million).
1921 and 1933: Is there any difference?
Awful statistics of the humanitarian disaster, however, completely rules out the version of the purposeful extermination of the Ukrainians as a specific ethnic group. The above table clearly shows that the demographic “chasm” in the Ukraine was jus slightly deeper than the Russian one, which means that the incurred losses do not differ dramatically, even speaking of the relative ratio. This gap can even be closed if we take the following fact into consideration: demographic losses of the Russian Federation were partially compensated by the inflow of the volunteered Komsomol3 members and special settlers (dispossessed kulaks4) to the constructions of the utmost North and Far East. It seems that death was equally mowing down both Russians and Ukrainians.
However, population of the RSFSR was much more severely hurt by the so-called “Volga region starvation” of 1921 than the Ukrainians. Thus, Russian demographic “downfall” has passed its peak earlier than the Ukrainian one. Portion of the Russian population that suffered in 1932-33 would be correspondingly smaller. But there is no fundamental difference between the “Volga region starvation” and the Holodomor. In both cases millions of victims are present — and in both cases they were gone due to the same reason: clumsy revolutionary destruction of the historically established social lifestyle. The difference between the two tragedies is purely geographical. In 1921 geographic range of starvation included eastern regions of the European part of RSFSR between Don, Sura and Ural; in 1933 it was all steppe areas of the USSR, from Odessa to Barnaul. In 1921 Russians, Tatars and Chuvashs prevailed among the victims; in 1933 it were Ukrainians, Russians and Kazakhs.
On the eve of this tragic date National Ukrainian Academy of Science published the results of its researches. Emelyan Rudnitsky, Academy of Science employee, reported at the official press-conference that the total number of the Ukrainian victims of 1932-33 was 3.5 million people. This is practically equal to the number of the starvation victims in RSFSR. According to Tatyana Harkova ( Research institute of the social-economic statistics problem for the State statistics committee of the Russian Federation), in 1933 Russian population decreased from 103 million 648 thousand to 101 million 763 thousand people, i. e. for 1.9 million people. In the previous year, however, when people haven’t started to die of starvation yet, RSFSR population increased for 1.6 million people. So instead of 1.6 million upgrowth there was a 1.9 million decrease in population, which means that the unnatural losses are equal to three and a half a million Ukrainians. As you may see, the selective extermination of the Ukrainians doesn’t follow from here, quite on the contrary — grievous parity of a common tragedy results from that.
And that’s the right moment to mention the “military cordons and blocked railway stations” in the Ukraine. Threat of starvation initiated mass escapes, in particular, from the collective farms. In that moment Stalin — in order to keep villagers from running away — has abolished the passports for the villagers, having restored serfdom for a quarter of a century. Passports were withdrawn across the country but not only in the Ukraine. The much-talked-about cordons were chasing the refugees everywhere: in Kharkov, Saratov or Karaganda.
Having seriously researching the ethnic aspect of Holodomor, we have to admit that the nation that suffered from the 30s social catastrophe most of all was the Kazakhs. That’s quite clear from the quoted Soviet statistics and it was also confirmed by Vladimir Malinkovich (director of Ukrainian branch of International humanitarian and political research institute) during the “Moscow-Kiev” television space bridge. According to the information of Ust-Kamenogorsk scientist A. N. Alekseenko, each one out of five Kazakhs has starved to death (that’s about 0.9 million people) and about 600 thousand people have moved out of the republic. Alma-Ata leaders, however, do not raise the question of the genocide of Kazakh nation. Their position is absolutely fair, as long as both Russian and Ukrainian peasants, living at the Kazakh steppes, were dying along with Nazarbaev’s compatriots. 20 years later people had to break the fresh virgin and long-fallow croplands, which were neglected after their death, all over again.
Were it the Russians who stood in the breach?
Even the quite “orange” scientists who are loyal to the official Kiev are unwittingly disproving the genocide version with their reports. For example, it was declared in the very report of the National Ukrainian Academy of Science that about 2002 thousand townsmen (about 17% of the republic’s townsfolk) and just 1506 thousand countrymen (less than 8% of the village dwellers) have died of starvation in 1932-33. In order to estimate these numbers we have to consider that by the beginning of 30s ethnic Ukrainians made up less than a half of the USSR townsmen, while in the country ethnic Ukrainians had an overwhelming majority. It turns out, that on the territory of the Ukrainian republic, Holodomor was threatening the lives of non-Ukrainians with a much greater probability. This thesis is corroborated with the facts. For example, in Berdyansk 71% of the whole number of victims (1184 people) were Russians, 13% were Ukrainians and 16% were members of the other nations (Greeks, Jews, Germans). The statistics itself is contradicting the version of a selective extermination of the Ukrainians.
Highly publicized Holodomor map from the National museum of Ukraine also proves the fact that the tragedy of 1932-33 wasn’t selectively directed against the Ukrainian nation. The map provides the clear visual demonstration of the fact that the highest number of victims were at the steppe regions with the mixed Russo-Ukrainian population (Kharkov, Lugansk, Chersonia, Zaporozhye, Pridnestrovye) as was well as the steppe regions of RSFSR (Rostov, Stavropol, Krasnodar and Crimea ASSR5). At the same time the forestland regions of the USSR (Hmelnitsk, Chernigov), i. e. the regions where the absolute majority of the ethnic Ukrainians prevails above the other nations, were practically not affected by the deadly starvation at all. Dwellers of these — aboriginal Ukrainian — territories (whose successors form the core of the “orange” electorate nowadays) suffered not more than their relatively problem-free neighbors in Byelorussia or Smolensk (if it’s appropriate to speak of the wellbeing in these terrible times).
It’s not a surprise that people, who know about Holodomor not from the propagandistic mythology, but due to their personal experience or from the stories of their parents, refuse to interpret this national tragedy of the 30s as an anti-Ukrainian genocide. 42% of the Ukrainians are positive that there was no purposeful and systematic extermination at all; mass deaths were caused by a tragic coincidence of a draught and the failure of the social experiment. More than half of the Ukrainian aged people hold this opinion; in the steppe regions — most severely struck by the starvation — four-fifths of the elder people and two-thirds of youngsters thinks so. Just 16% of Ukrainian citizens believe the Holodomor was a purposeful extermination of the ethnic Ukrainians. Absolute majority of the “genocide theory” partisans are under 50 and they usually populate the “orange” (western and northern) parts of republic — the ones that were not at the edge of the humanitarian disaster.
Main achievement of the “era of independence”
Demographic statistics of the independent Ukraine of 1991-2009 period, however, gives a lot more grounds for the accusations of genocide. Data of the all-Ukrainian general census of population shows the Russian community decreased for 26.6% (about 3 million people). Where have all the Russians gone?
What if they have left due to the economical reasons? Maybe, trying to escape from the permanent Ukrainian crisis, they’ve immigrated to Russia? But Hungarians, according to the same census of population, are not hurrying to repatriate themselves to a much safer Hungary. In 2001 number Hungarian community made up 96% of its 1989 number.
And what if the part of the Ukrainians, as “the most knowledgeable” demographers claim, had to call themselves Russian during the totalitarian Soviet times, and now got back to the bosom of their Motherland nation? What a familiar story, huh...But the same thing is happening with the Byelorussians — during ten years of the Ukrainian independence Byelorussian community decreased for 32%! I hope that even “the most knowledgeable” demographers haven’t came to the idea that “during the totalitarian Soviet times somebody forced Ukrainians to call themselves Byelorussians”.
Facts, however, are very stubborn. And they undeniably prove the fact, that the Ukrainian authorities are carrying out the policy either of selective ousting of the Russian and Byelorussian population or of their forcible Ukrainization. Those, however, who unsheathe the sword against their most intimate fellow-nations, are inevitably unsheathing the sword against a whole eastern Slavic family, including their own nation. Policy of breaking off the connection with your own past, with the spiritual roots of the Ukraine, policy of the artificial westernization is disastrous for the Ukrainians.
Today, the Ukraine is an absolute world leader of the demographical decline. During fifteen years of independence, its population declined for 6 million people (12% of population). Ukrainian death rates are three times bigger then Russian death rates of the 90s. “The Economist” magazine forecasted that by the middle of 21st century population of the country will decrease for 43 percents. There would be 28 million of ethnic Ukrainians all over the world — this is less than by the end of the Holodomor. These numbers caused Ukrainian publicist V. Kovalev to make shocking but still fair conclusion: “In 1932-33 the Ukrainian nation starved, but now it goes through the genocide”.
By the way, recently USS (Ukrainian Security Service) commission have named three main culprits of the 1933 Ukrainian “genocide: Stanislav Kosior, Pavel Postyshev and Vlas Chubar. The paradox of the situation is that two of these three people are ethnic Ukrainians. Even more paradoxical is the fact that in 1938-39 all of them were shot by the Stalin regime as the “public enemies”. It turns out that the totalitarian regime wasn’t very lenient to the persons responsible for the “genocide”. It seems that the regime has actually lacked people — as the soldiers for the future wars if not for any other reason — and it couldn’t forgive the loss of millions of potential draftees. You may also think that the divine justice took place independently from the will of the authorities.
Thanks God, there are no “public enemies” nowadays. But we still have such “friends” that are more harmful than any kind of enemy.
By Vladimir Timakov
1 Hereinafter USSR stands for “Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic”.
2 Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
3 Syllabic abbreviation from the Russian Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodyozhi (All-Union Leninist Young Communist League), was the youth wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
4 Category of relatively affluent peasants in Soviet Union.
5 Autonomic Soviet Social Republic.
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