Holodomor: Genocide by Famine
May 27 through January 11, 2009 (extended)
An exhibition that details the horrors and magnitude of the Holodomor – the little-known Ukrainian genocide that resulted in the deaths of some 10 million people – opens at The Ukrainian Museum on Tuesday evening, May 27 at 5:30 p.m.
The exhibition, Holodomor: Genocide by Famine, is one of a series of events taking place around the world to commemorate the 75th anniversary of what James Mace, the director of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine (1988), referred to as "the crime of the century that nobody's ever heard of."
The horrific event, known in Ukrainian as the Holodomor (literally, murder by starvation), took place in 1932-1933, less than twenty years after Ukraine was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union. Determined to force all Ukrainian farmers onto collective farms, to crush the burgeoning national revival, and to forestall any calls for Ukraine's independence, the brutal Communist regime of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin embarked on a campaign to starve the Ukrainian people into submission.
The Soviet government confiscated all the grain produced by Ukrainian farmers, withheld other foodstuffs, executed anyone trying to obtain food, and punished those who attempted to flee. As a result, in the land called the Breadbasket of Europe, millions of men, women, and children were starved to death.
Stalin boasted privately that 10 million people – 25% of Ukraine's population – had perished during the Holodomor. At least 3 million of the victims were children.
Despite the magnitude of the atrocity, the Soviet regime, behind its Iron Curtain, denied the existence of the Holodomor for decades, denouncing any reports as "anti-Soviet propaganda." It was not until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent establishment of an independent Ukraine that the contents of many sealed government archives were uncovered, exposing a wealth of gruesome information.
(ukrainianmuseum.org) "Genocide by Famine"
The Holodomor, Manmade Ukrainian Famine
Source:
Stalin's Lies, "Big Lies of the 20th Century"
Chicago-American newspaper, from the Holodomor. Famine used as a weapon to starve 7 million, in effort to break Ukrainian Nationalism during the period between 1932-1933. See leftwing distortions of history on encyclopedia sites such as Wikipedia and Answers.com minimizing the evil of Communism.
Holodomor to Break Ukrainian Nationalism
"I have registered an article on the English Wikipedia to restore balance to the article about the soviet enigneered famine in Ukraine, conducted as a genocide against the Ukrainians. This article has been heavily assaulted by a small group of mostly Russian users, some of them openly declaring they're support for the criminal soviet system. I have made extensive explanations in my edit summaries (eg.: [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]) as well as explained the situation and pointed out sepcific issues ([12], [13]) to which haven't gotten any reasonable reply. --Vernyhora 10:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)"
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Vernyhora
"Stalin replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s with Five-Year Plans in 1928 and collective farming at roughly the same time. The Soviet Union was transformed from a predominantly peasant society to a major world industrial power by the end of the 1930s. Confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities under his orders contributed to a famine between 1932 and 1934, especially in the key agricultural regions of the Soviet Union, Ukraine Holodomor, Kazakhstan and North Caucasus that resulted in millions of deaths. Many peasants resisted collectivization and grain confiscations, but were repressed, most notably well-off peasants deemed "kulaks".
In the first years of collectivization it was estimated that industrial production would rise by 200% and and agricultural production by 50%[21], but these estimates were not met. Stalin blamed this unanticipated failure on kulaks (rich peasants), who resisted collectivization. (However, kulaks proper made up only 4% of the peasant population; the "kulaks" that Stalin targeted included the slightly better-off peasants who took the brunt of violence from the OGPU and the Komsomol. These peasants were about 60% of the population). Those officially defined as "kulaks," "kulak helpers," and later "ex-kulaks" were to be shot, placed into Gulag labor camps, or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge.
The two-stage progress of collectivization—interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous editorial, "Dizzy with success" (Pravda, March 2, 1930), and "Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" (Pravda, April 3, 1930)—is a prime example of his capacity for tactical political withdrawal followed by intensification of initial strategies.
Many historians assert that the disruption caused by collectivization was largely responsible for major famines.
The 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine and the Kuban regions has been termed the Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор).
According to Alan Bullock, "the total Soviet grain crop was no worse than that of 1931 … it was not a crop failure but the excessive demands of the state, ruthlessly enforced, that cost the lives of as many as five million Ukrainian peasants." Stalin refused to release large grain reserves that could have alleviated the famine, while continuing to export grain; he was convinced that the Ukrainian peasants had hidden grain away, and strictly enforced draconian new collective-farm theft laws in response.
Other historians hold that it was largely the insufficient harvests of 1931 and 1932 caused by a variety of natural disasters that resulted in famine, with the successful harvest of 1933 ending the famine.
Famine affected other parts of the USSR. The death toll from famine in the Soviet Union at this time is estimated at between five and ten million people. The worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, had caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths.)
Soviet and other historians have argued that the rapid collectivization of agriculture was necessary in order to achieve an equally rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union[citation needed] and ultimately win World War II. This is disputed by other historians; Alec Nove claims that the Soviet Union industrialized in spite of, rather than because of, its collectivized agriculture.
Retrieved from Soviet democracy
http://www.answers.com/topic/joseph-stalin
"...Other historians..." (questionable credentials) "...the insufficient harvests of 1931 and 1932 caused by a variety of natural disasters that resulted in famine..."Can anyone say, "
Communist Propaganda?!?"
Those who make ongoing excuses for this man-made famine holocaust have dealt a blow to every person who has suffered directly or indirectly from Communist policies. Leftwing apologists, Atheists, obviously have no shame or human empathy when they create such blatant distortions of history.
Stalin and His Hangmen
