The Holodomor: The Great Famine in Ukraine

Well this past week­end we went to Sacra­mento to visit the Ukraini­ans, also know as, Vitaliy’s rel­a­tives. We go there on a reg­u­lar basis to visit the fam­ily and fill our tum­mies with all of the yummy Ukrain­ian dishes. This trip was even more spe­cial because we spent time com­mem­o­rat­ing The Holodomor. This year marks the 75th anniver­sary of the great man-made Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine. In Ukrain­ian this is known as the Holodomor (exter­mi­na­tion by hunger). We vis­ited a local library which was host­ing an exhibit on this tragedy. One of the most sad­den­ing aspects of this dev­as­ta­tion is the fact that most peo­ple do not know even know it occurred. I am embar­rassed to say that I was in that category.

Obvi­ously, being Ukrain­ian, this is a part of our his­tory and so it was impor­tant for us to observe the anniver­sary of this injus­tice in my husband’s home coun­try. All of the details of The Holodomor are too many to account in this post so I rec­om­mend you take a look at a num­ber of web­sites and news arti­cles ded­i­cated to this topic. How­ever, I will leave you with a few things that stood out to me.

Nobody knows the exact num­ber of vic­tims, but on-going demo­graphic and archival research has placed the num­ber between 3 and 6 mil­lion. How­ever, offi­cial Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment esti­mates are even higher than this num­ber. Soviet dic­ta­tor Joseph Stalin cre­ated poli­cies that stripped away the farms from their own­ers and handed them over to be run by the gov­ern­ment. He also had the entire bor­der of Ukraine sur­rounded so that no food could go in or out of Ukraine. This was his tech­nique for starv­ing the peo­ple to death. In order to pre­vent any Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism, the 1930s were filled with mas­sive purg­ing, exe­cu­tions, or impris­on­ment of Ukrain­ian intel­lec­tu­als, schol­ars, writ­ers and artists. The gov­ern­ment sent in brigades to the vil­lages to remove any left­over live­stock or grain. This led peo­ple to eat roots, tree bark, stray ani­mals and birds. Even­tu­ally, can­ni­bal­ism was reported. At the end of 1932 to the begin­ning of 1933, roughly twenty-five thou­sand peo­ple died daily. More than half of these vic­tims were chil­dren. With the bor­ders being con­trolled by the Sovi­ets, for­eign press and aid were pre­vented to reach the affected areas. It was so well hid­den that the pres­i­dent of France vis­ited Ukraine to see if the rumors were true. They staged his entire trip so that every­where he went the streets were full of happy chil­dren and food in all the store fronts. He went home with­out wit­ness­ing any signs of a famine. After the col­lapse of the Soviet Union mas­sive amounts of evi­dence began to sur­face. How­ever, Com­mu­nist par­ties of Ukraine and Rus­sia, and offi­cial Russ­ian pol­icy still deny all facts and evi­dence revealed.

I wanted to share all of this with you because it is an impor­tant part of his­tory that needs not be for­got­ten. This is one injus­tice in the world amongst so many oth­ers. Let us not turn our eyes away from what is really hap­pen­ing all over the world. We live in a free nation and are blessed beyond imag­in­able; how­ever, this is not the case for most of the world. Let us be thank­ful for all that we have this Thanks­giv­ing day. But let us not for­get those that are still suffering.

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