HOLODOMOR = ZYD/NKVD HOLOCAUST ON UKRAINIANS! Message:
Probably the best analysis of what happened that I have read to date.
Trident
IS THERE A "SMOKING GUN" FOR THE HOLODOMOR?
PRESENTATION: By Professor Roman Serbyn Universit=E9 du Qu=E9bec =E0
Montr=E9al, Canada
The Ukrainian Holodomor and the Denial of Genocides
International Conference, Federigo Argentieri, Ph.D., Organizer
Guarini Institute, John Cabot University
Rome, Italy, Friday, November 09, 2007
Published by the Action Ukraine Report #889, Article 5
Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, November 19, 2007
In his seminal study on genocide, Leo Kuper observed that "governments
hardly declare and document genocidal plans in the manner of the
Nazis"
[1]. Nevertheless, since modern states cannot function without large
bureaucracies and elaborate communication systems, tell-tale records
inevitably survive.
When the CPSU lost power and the Soviet empire fell apart, it was
Revealed that an elaborate paper trail of the 1932-33 famine and the Soviet
authorities' involvement in it had been preserved in party and state
archives. These documents are being slowly declassified, examined and
published[2]. Historians can now give us a fairly accurate account of
the catastrophe and ascertain the responsibility of Stalin and his
collaborators.
As a result, scholars who previously hesitated to recognize the
Genocidal character of Stalin's forced starvation of Ukrainian farmers, have
reexamined the question and readjusted their interpretations. In his
latest book, Nicolas Werth comes to the conclusion that thanks to recent
studies based on the new documents, it is now "legitimate to qualify as
genocide the cluster of actions undertaken by the Stalinist regime to punish
the
Ukrainian peasantry by famine and terror"[3].
In this paper I analyze some of the main documents that provide
smoking-gun evidence of genocide, in line with the definition of the crime
given
in the UN Convention of 1948: "acts committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such".
The key criteria in the Convention are proof of "intent" and
Identification eligible "groups". Soviet documents corroborate the accusation
against
Stalin and his closest collaborators for deliberately exterminating
Millions of Ukrainian farmers, and show that the perpetrators targeted them as
Ukrainians.
Furthermore these and other documents reveal that the genocide was not
Just against Ukrainian farmers, the focus of the attack was the Ukrainian
Nation in all its component parts and on all its territories within the
Soviet Union.
The locus of this crime was thus the Ukrainian SSR, the predominantly
Ukrainian Kuban, and the other regions of the RSFSR with sizeable
Ukrainian populations. The simultaneous decimation of Ukrainian national
elites,
especially academic, cultural and political leaders, was an integral part of
the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.
Stalin did not intend to kill all Ukrainians (nor is such an intent
Required by the Convention); his motive was to break the backbone of the
nation
By executing a sizeable percentage of the people and reducing the rest to
servile obedience, to transform them into manageable cogs of the state
mechanism. Stalin's means of destruction were varied: famine, shootings,
exhausting forced labor.
The UN Convention does not require the establishment of motives for
genocide, but determining the reasons for the act gives an insight
into the rationale which led to crime and thus help us comprehend the
perpetrator's intent. Stalin's measures against the Ukrainians were predicated
on
his political ambitions, two of which provided the motives for the
eventual genocide[4].
The first was to extend socialism beyond the borders of the USSR. He
realized that the Bolsheviks' initial attempt to export their revolution
into Europe failed primarily because of the weakness of the Red Army.
To resume Lenin's unfinished task, Stalin needed a powerful armed force,
Backed by modern heavy industry. Industrialization had to be financed by
Exporting natural resources, especially grain, which had to be extorted from
the
farmers at the lowest cost to the state.
War communism had shown that door-to-door requisition was costly,
inefficient and politically dangerous. After the revolution, poor
farmers appropriated and divided up the land of rich landlords. As a result,
farmers lived better, ate more but sold less to the state. Marketable grain
(sold outside the village) in tsarist times was provided by the large farms
Owned by landlords and kulaks. Now new large estates had to be set up in the
Form of sovkhozy and kolkhozy. These would give the state easy access to
grain, produced by the newly enslaved peasants.
The immediate goal was not the increase of grain production (which
could be expected to fall as a result of peasant opposition), but of the
"marketable grain" to be delivered to the state. Since the main producers of
grain
Were Ukrainians farmers, who had no tradition of the Russian semi-communal
obshchina organization, they could be expected to offer stiff resistance to
forced collectivization and confiscation of the fruits of their labor.
Stalin's second ambition was to bring a permanent solution to the
National question, especially its crucial Ukrainian component. The 1926 census
Pegged the Ukrainian population at 31 million, of the Union's 147 million: 23
million in Ukraine, and 8 million in the rest of the USSR, mainly along the
Ukrainian border.
Ukrainian national revival triggered by the Russian revolution forced
Lenin to give the reconquered republic nominal autonomy in the form of a
"sovereign" republic within a Potemkin-style Soviet federation.
Subsequent policy of Ukrainization, or the local application of a general
principle of korenizatsiia (nativization), allowed Ukrainians to add real
national
content to the pretentiously misleading form of "soviet republic"[5].
The Ukrainization of education, communications and administration, not
Only in Ukraine but also in the Ukrainian regions of the RSFSR, the
de-Russification of urban centers by the influx of Ukrainian farmers,
the demands on Moscow to transfer to the republic adjacent territories
with Ukrainian population, the shifting of cultural orientation from Moscow
and to the West - all these pressures on the imperial centre could not be
ignored by the Kremlin.
Stalin, Lenin's "magnificent Georgian" and foremost expert on the
nationalities question, understood the dangers of active nation-
building in Ukraine, in the best of times. Collectivization would only
aggravate
the situation. Over 85 % of ethnic Ukrainians were farmers and their
sudden disenfranchisement could throw the countryside into such turmoil that
not only grain production would be catastrophically reduced, but also
farmers could gain the support of the national elites in a united rebellion of
the whole republic to the spoliation of their country by Moscow.
Similar, if smaller, unrest could be expected in the Kuban' and other
ethnically Ukrainian regions of the RSFSR. In the mid-1920s Stalin had
written that the peasant question was "the basis, the quintessence, of
the national question", that "the peasantry constitutes the main army of
the national movement" and that "there is no powerful national movement
without the peasant army"[6]. The stability and even the integrity of the
Soviet empire would be threatened.
Genocide does not happen spontaneously. The targeted group is first
identified, vilified and intimidated, then it is discredited in the
eyes of the rest of the population, and only when it has been sufficiently
isolated, is it submitted to total or partial extermination. In the summer of
1929 the GPU (political police) "uncovered" a nationalist conspiracy, headed
by
prominent Ukrainian intellectuals and conducting anti-Soviet work in
villages and regional centers.
Over 700 people were arrested for, among other things, "anti-Soviet
Activity in the villages and district centers" and a show trial was held in
March 1930, appropriately staged in a Kharkiv theatre. 45 members of this
Mythical Association for the Liberation of Ukraine (SVU) were sentenced to
death or long prison terms.
Arrests and trials of other mostly fictitious groups followed:
Ukrainian National Center, Ukrainian Military Organization, etc.[7] The
condemned were former members of the former Ukrainian national governments,
Ukrainian armed forces, Ukrainian political parties, and prominent people in
fields of education, culture and the arts.
The purpose was to terrorize the Ukrainian elites into submission and
lethargy, and thus deprive the peasants of leadership on the national
level.
It should be noted that, in connection with the less severe famine in
Russia, no parallel attack took place against Russian national elites
or the Russian culture.
Stalin's war against the peasants began in earnest towards the end of
1929.
In a two-pronged attack he ordered to "eliminate the dekulakization as a
class" and to collectivize the middle and poor peasants. Divided into
three categories, the kulaks were dispossessed and the most dangerous were
shot.
The others were deported to the wilds of northern RSFSR, transferred
To distant regions in Ukraine, or given strips of poor land outside the
Kolkhoz near which they lived. The intention was not only to provide kolkhozes
With the confiscated land, cattle and machinery, but also to deprive the
Peasants of the more qualified leadership for their opposition to the
authorities.
During the winter of 1929-1930, 90 thousand Ukrainian households were
dekulakized, and a smaller wave more or less finished the job a year
later.
In 1934 Kossior, party boss of Ukraine, reported that 200 thousand
farms had been dekulakized in Ukraine. Out of this number of about one million
(5 members per family), several thousand were deported to the northern
parts of the RSFSR and lost to the Ukrainian nation.
...
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