Memorial Day for Victims of Holodomor: History and Features

The day of memory of the victims of famines is noted mainly in modern Ukraine, but other states have the right to hold similar events. In particular, the famine in the USSR, which took place in 1932-1933, actually covered the territories of Kazakhstan, the North Caucasus, the Volga region, Western Siberia, Belarus and Ukraine. To a lesser extent, this disaster affected Armenia and Azerbaijan, the eastern regions of the USSR of that time, as well as the Moscow region and territories further north, although they were consuming rather than producing agricultural products.

The famine in Russia was several times a century

In Russia, the pre-revolutionary period, the famine years were not at all a great rarity. Thus, it is believed that the lack of food was noted in 1880, 1892 (especially the hungry year), 1891, 1897-1898, the same situation was in 1901, 1905-1908, 1911 and 1913. But the memory of the victims of the Holodomor was not respected in any way, since, despite the bad harvests, there were no mass casualties among the population. But there was his sufficient reduction in terms of life due to the use of surrogates instead of full-fledged products. It is worth noting that the state made attempts to stop the consequences of crop failures by creating grain stocks and providing them to the needy in the famine years. In particular, this system worked particularly well in 1911.

Victims of the first famine under the Soviet regime

The situation developed somewhat differently after the Great October Socialist Revolution, followed by the Civil War. Moreover, the overthrow of the tsarist regime was preceded by the First World War. In connection with the crisis of power and chaos prevailing in the country, the first famine in Soviet times was registered in 1921-1922, when a severe drought broke out, which increased existing organizational and military problems. The main affected areas then were the Volga region and the Southern Urals. The day of memory of the victims of the famines in Russia has not been established, although the number of victims is impressive - 5 million people. The situation was so severe that the Bolshevik government accepted the help of Western countries and seized many church values under the guise of helping the starving.

In the death of people is the system to blame?

The memory of the victims of the famine of 1932-1933 is revered especially because during this period there were no natural prerequisites for such a situation - these years, unlike in 1921, 1946, were not barren. Therefore, in the death of millions of people, the Communist regime is regarded as guilty (in accordance with the officially adopted version). It is based on the fact that since 1927 the government of the USSR has been developing plans for solid collectivization in agriculture by compulsory methods, since at 95% of the crop area the yields were about half of the pre-war rate. Pressure was planned on the prosperous part of the farmers, which, after its implementation, led to the fact that the working young people fled to the cities, and about 2 million of the most sensible workers were sent to the eastern regions of the country (where the hunger was manifested to the minimum).

The ruin of "kulaks" led to a drop in the qualifications of the labor force

The day of memory of the victims of the Holodomor, unfortunately, can indeed be noted in connection with the long-standing mistakes of the Soviet leadership, since such a policy led to a significant shortage of draft power and a great deterioration in the skills of agricultural workers in the most promising regions of the country already to the sowing season of 1931. The lack of qualitative farming skills among the remaining collective farm peasants led to the fact that the fields were not well-processed (even the Red Army part was sent to weed), and the harvest lost up to one-fifth of the entire crop.

Loss of half the crop and two million victims in Kazakhstan

A day of remembrance of the victims of the famine in Ukraine could never be established if in 1932, in this, at that time, Soviet republic, about 40 percent of the entire grain crop was left standing on the vine. Simultaneously, almost the same figure (about 36%) is recorded in the sources for the grain-growing areas of the Lower and Upper Volga. Therefore, Ukraine in its trouble of that time has "fellow-sufferers" - Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan. The peculiarity of Ukraine is that the famine of those years covered almost all of its territory, therefore some local historians mistakenly believe that it was directed genocide against the Ukrainian nation. In Kazakhstan, where people do not celebrate the day of memory of the victims of famines, about 2 million people died from food shortages during the same period, while almost half of the indigenous people left their place of residence and left for other regions.

The seizure of agricultural products was accompanied by repression

When does the memory of the victims of the Holodomor commemorate in Ukraine? The date of this event was set by the Ukrainian president L. Kuchma and falls on the last Saturday of November (since 1998). Since 2000, this day is honored not only by the memory of the victims of the famine years, but also by the memory of the victims of repression, which in the 30s of the 20th century were very numerous throughout the former USSR. In particular, in 1932-1933, during the famine, the law "On the Five Spikelets" was adopted, when for attempts to starve people on the field several stalks of grain could be shot (more than two thousand sentences carried out) or convicted (convicted of 52,000 people). And this all happened against the backdrop of mass seizure of agricultural products by the most inhuman methods. People were evicted, beaten, shot, frozen, buried in waists in the pits, tortured, forced to drink water mixed with kerosene, disrupted their homes, etc. Thus, about 593 tons of grain were received.

A huge range in the assessment of the dead

The memory of the victims of the Holodomor in all regions of many countries today is revered, as they were the relatives of some of the living now. And what happens then should not be forgotten, because the events of those years were more than tragic. In Ukraine, in 1933, deaths in some regions reached one hundred percent, up to 25,000 per day per day, and the total number of victims was, according to various estimates, from 4.6 million people (data of French researchers) to ten million (information from the US Congress, possibly , In general for the USSR). The exact figures are unlikely to ever be known, since Soviet statistics has ceased to take into account the victims since April 1933, when their number approached 2.42 million people only in Ukraine. In addition, it is estimated that in those years, due to famine, one million Ukrainian babies were not born.

Modern people should honor the memory of the victims of the Holodomor. Photos of those terrible years often show us cannibals from different parts of the former USSR with the remains of their victims. In total, Ukraine officially recorded (again, until April 1933) about 2500 episodes of cannibalism (killing for later consumption) and eating corpses of the deceased. Such events should not be repeated, especially since in today's reality hundreds of millions of people on the planet are suffering and perishing from malnutrition.

The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomor has by now partly become a topic for speculation of various kinds. For example, the President of Ukraine V. Yushchenko issued a law in which the famine in Ukraine (at that time) is considered genocide, and its public denial is punishable in law as an unlawful act aimed at humiliating the dignity of the Ukrainian nation, outraging the memory of millions of dead. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation believes that recognizing the famine as genocide is one-sided, since not only Ukrainians, but also many other nationalities suffered.

Ukrainians simply honor the memory of the victims of the Holodomor. 2014 did not become an exception for this - in many cities there were corresponding events with the laying of flowers to the monuments to the victims of this tragedy.

Additional version of the causes of high mortality in 1932-1933.

Unofficial studies of the difficult period of Soviet history recorded one curious fact: among the deceased people there was a certain number of those who did not lose weight before the skeletal state from hunger, but, on the contrary, it was strongly swollen. This is a feature of the famine of 1933, which does not occur either in 1921 or in the bad years of 1946, nor even in the besieged Leningrad. Cases of swelling were found even in families with hidden food supplies, which is believed to indicate the ingestion of toxins into the food available, as an option of fungal origin. In particular, in those years in the fields of the whole Eastern Europe, a disease of bread, such as "rust", which hit half the crop in some areas, including Ukraine, was officially recorded. Therefore, perhaps some people died not from hunger, but from intoxications caused by the poor quality of the harvested crop, which does not detract from the overall scope of this tragedy. The memory of the victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics should be properly maintained so that such events never happen again.