Each year Ukrainians around the world add another chronological notch in the timeline of their historical record of subjugation, death and now finally independence.
This year Ukrainians are commemorating the 90th anniversary of the heinous, genocidal famine, the Holodomor, that russia inflicted upon their nation that brutally took the lives of 7-10 million men, women and children.
Reading about the Holodomor, you may wonder how a human being dies of starvation, especially when there is no chance of self-preservation, when death is inevitable for yourself and your spouse and children.
According to experts, as starvation progresses, the physical symptoms set in. The timing of these symptoms depends on age, size, and overall health. It usually takes days to weeks, and includes weakness, fast heart rate, shallow breaths that are slowed, thirst, and constipation. There may also be diarrhea in some cases. The eyes begin to sink in and glass over. The muscles begin to shrink and muscle wasting sets in. Tiredness and dizziness also commonly occur, especially from any physical task. The skin is often overly pale. One prominent sign in children is a swollen belly. Skin loosens and turns pale in color, and there may be swelling of the feet and ankles. If a person is dying from starvation, they may experience heart problems as well. Pain is not only determined by medical conditions that cause pain, like cancer or lung disease, but also by factors such as emotional distress, interpersonal conflicts, and the non-acceptance of one’s own premature, impending death.
But what do the experts know? Those who died of starvation never described their experiences, they don’t leave a record. They couldn’t even compare it with fasting for a few hours or days.
But the effect was undeniably catastrophic not only for the existing generation of Ukrainians but for subsequent ones as well. The birthrate, fertility and population were premeditatively decimated by russia because the kremlin rulers, stalin and others, couldn’t force the nation to succumb to their will.
Among the many writers who detailed the Holodomor was Nicholas Prychodko, an eyewitness. One of his articles on this and other topics of russian subjugation of Ukraine appeared on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the famine in the 1953 edition of The Ukrainian Quarterly. Here are a few salient passages of what he saw:
“In 1941, when Germans invaded Ukraine, they found in the Academy of Sciences in Kyiv the true statistics of the crops harvested in 1932. These figures proved that the yield was sufficient to feed the Ukrainian population for two years and four months and to seed all the fields. There was no natural cause for the famine. It was purposely created to break the resistance of the farmers to collectivization and to the russian colonial domination of Ukraine…
“Helpless, despairing, they died by thousands, by tens of thousands, by millions. The statistical bureaus were ordered to register the deaths as resulting from prevalent digestive ailments…
“Through the streets of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and other cities, the miserable hulks of humanity dragged themselves on swollen feet, begging for crusts of bread or searching for scraps on garbage heaps, frozen and filthy. Each morning wagons rolled through the streets collecting the bodies. Often even the undershirt had been stripped from the body to be exchanged for a piece of bread…
“At this time, a friend of mine worked as an assistant in the October Revolution Hospital. After completing his medical studies in 1931 he worked in the surgical department. One evening he invited me to visit him in the hospital and promised me an unusual spectacle. When I arrived, he gave me a doctor’s white smock to put on and took me to a large garage in the yard. A guard unlocked the door and we entered. My friend switched on the light, and I beheld an unforgettable picture of horror.
“Piled like cordwood against the walls, layer upon layer, were the frozen corpses of the victims picked off the streets that morning. Some of the bodies, I later learned, were used for dissection and experiments in the laboratories. The rest were simply buried in the pits at midnight in nearby ravines out of sight of the people.
“This,” my friend whispered softly, “is the fate of our villages.”
“I was too unnerved to utter a word. With unbelieving eyes, I could only stare at hundreds of outstretched frozen hands which still seemed to be begging for bread; begging for life.
“My friend turned out the lights and we left without a word. The guard slammed the door shut and locked it behind us. Slowly we walked home, speechless and shaken, but with a mutual understanding between us…
“My son, my darling. Where will I bury you and where shall I find my own grave?
“In this way 1933 brought death to the villages of Ukraine. Many places which had formerly boasted of populations from 2,500 to 3,000 now counted but 200 to 300 inhabitants. Later the government brought colonies of russians to these villages to occupy the vacant homes and to this day they plow and till the rich black soil of Ukraine.
“The tougher farmers who had somehow survived the fatal famine and lived to see the following harvest were sentenced to 10 years of Siberian slave labor if they so much as picked a handful of wheat ears to chew the half-ripened kernels for nourishment. This crime was branded, ‘theft of socialist property.’
Over seven million Ukrainians died in that artificially created famine. If the statement seems far-fetched one need only look in the ‘Small Soviet Encyclopedia,’ 1940 edition, and under the heading ‘Ukraine’ note this fact: in the 1927 census Eastern (Soviet) Ukraine had a population of 32 million; in 1939 (12 years later) it had only 28 million. Where did the 4 million disappear and where was the natural increase in population which should have numbered about 6-7 million? The answer is: the famine and Siberia.
Unable to tolerate further the tragic plight of their people, two of Ukraine’s outstanding ardent communists, the writer Mykola Khvylovy and Mykola Skrypnyk, former friend of Lenin and at that time commissar of education, who had upheld the revolution with heart and soul, committed suicide. They had realized too late the falsity, the duplicity of communist ideals which they had so earnestly believed in and preached.”
Despite the efforts by russia and its lackeys in the west, such as Walter Duranty, Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times, to deny the famine, in time the world learned about one of the greatest crimes against humanity – the planned annihilation of a nation.
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish scholar who coined the term “genocide” and initiated the Genocide Convention, wrote that the Holodomor “is a classic example of the soviet genocide, the longest and most extensive experiment in russification, namely the extermination of the Ukrainian nation.” According to Lemkin, the Holodomor consisted of four steps: the decimation of the Ukrainian national elites, the destruction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the starvation of the Ukrainian farming population, and its replacement with non-Ukrainians from the russian SFSR and elsewhere.
Lemkin estimated the losses of the Holodomor at 5 million. He considered this famine to be a step in the long sequence of genocidal events that also included forced emigration, destruction of the intellectual elite, religious persecution, and mass shootings of the people of Ukraine.
Annual rallies, requiems and resolutions are still needed to honor the memory of the millions of Ukrainians who suffered and continue to suffer under the russia’s policy of using starvation as a weapon to try to break the independent spirit and identity of the Ukrainian nation. Raising awareness about the Holodomor can help keep russian or other tyrants from repeating this ugly chapter in world history and painful chapter in Ukrainian history.
Out of the 195 countries of the world, these UN member-states and others have recognized the Holodomor as genocide on the state level: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Moldova, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Ukraine, USA, Vatican City, Wales as well as the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Additionally, 31 US states as well as many local communities have issued proclamations recognizing the Holodomor as genocide.
With russia’s war raging in Ukraine as living proof of its genocidal policy the question persists, where are the others?
As Ukraine continues to fight today to defend its independence and sovereignty in the face of russian aggression, any resolution serves as an even more important reminder of the horrible atrocities inflicted upon Ukraine and the perseverance of nation that has proven its spirit cannot be broken.
Today, for the 90th time we remember the victims of the famine who were killed and support the efforts of the Ukrainian nation in Ukraine and elsewhere to bring global awareness to its battle, particularly as the world confronts russian aggression on several fronts.
On Saturday, November 18, if you’re in New York City, please join for an ecclesiastical Moleben-Requiem for the victims, survivors, and families of this tragedy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral at 1 pm.
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