Remembering the Holodomor horror

Quote: With each passing year, the evidence grows. Previously suppressed census data, photographs of soldiers guarding grain stores, accounts of local uprisings -- all add more depth and detail to the horrendous story of the Holodomor, the name Ukrainians have given to the famine that killed seven to 10 million in 1932-33.
"There is a wealth of documentation coming out," says historian Roman Serbyn of this dark chapter in the history of the Soviet Union. "Historians have trouble keeping up," adds the retired professor, who continues to research the Holodomor.
Information has been emerging since the demise of the Soviet Union, he says. A significant trove came to light last year when another cache of Soviet secret police (KGB) files was released.
This trickle of documentation is one of the reasons the term Holodomor is unfamiliar to most. And why, 75 years later, Ukrainians still seek recognition for what they call a genocide, perpetrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
This trickle of documentation is one of the reasons the term Holodomor is unfamiliar to most. And why, 75 years later, Ukrainians still seek recognition for what they call a genocide, perpetrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
As part of the campaign to increase Holodomor awareness, the International Remembrance Flame is expected to arrive in Ottawa on Monday, the last of 16 stops in Canada. The flame's journey through Canada is organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Embassy of Ukraine. Stefan Horlatsch, an 87-year-old Holodomor survivor, is accompanying the torch on its Canadian journey. As a child he watched as Soviet authorities seized his family's land, livestock and grain. He lost 11 family members to starvation.
The Remembrance Flame then travels to the United States as part of a world tour that includes 33 countries.
Stalin's intention was to pay for industrialization by the export of grain. "Ukraine was the granary of Russia," says Mr. Serbyn.
In 1929, the drive to collectivize agriculture began. This process was viewed as essential to the development of a Communist state. Mr. Serbyn sees it differently. Collectivization, he observes dryly, "is a more efficient way of confiscating food for export."
At first, resistance was fierce. "Literally millions of people were involved in strikes and local uprisings," says Mr. Serbyn. "Soviet administrators were chased from the villages."
The bulk of the resistance came from a class of landowners known as kulaks. Because of their opposition Stalin set out to destroy them. Their land was seized and they were not allowed to join the collectives. Many were shot or deported to northern Russia. This process, known as dekulakization, deprived villages of their leadership. With resistance quashed, quotas were established and the peasants had to deliver the grain themselves.
At the height of the famine, it is estimated that 25,000 Ukrainian villagers a day were dying. At the same time, it is now known that there were 1.8 million tons of grain in state reserves. "We have photographs of guards guarding the locations," says Mr. Serbyn.
"All the government had to do was to stop exporting and release the grain," he says. "Instead they denied people were starving."
With most of the deaths in isolated villages, there is no way of knowing how many died, but the long-suppressed census figures of 1937 reveal that the number of Ukrainians within the Soviet Union was 26.4 million, almost five million less than in 1926.
In 1929, a number of Ukrainian intellectuals were arrested and blamed for organizing the peasantry. There were show trials, said Mr. Serbyn, "staged in a theatre, very symbolical."
About 45 academics and political leaders were executed, exiled, or imprisoned.
In 1931, the Ukrainian language was outlawed.
On Jan. 22, 1932, with famine raging, the borders of Ukraine were closed to prevent the starving from going in search of food.
The eight million Ukrainians living outside Ukraine were also targeted. The Kuban, an area in the Northern Caucasus populated by the descendants of Ukrainian cossacks, was also cordoned off. Entire cossack settlements were deported to northern Russia.
In Ukraine in 1932-33, any photographs were taken clandestinely. The Soviet government denied the famine, refused foreign aid and ordered members of the foreign press to remain in Moscow.

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