A: Plan of Investigation
1. Subject- Was the Holdomor an intentional genocidal policy of the Soviet Union leadership?
2. Methods- Will use two basic sets of sources, newspapers written at the time from prominent journalists such as Walter Duranty, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Gareth Jones as well as later books written by prominent historians such as Robert Conquest. The summary of evidence will consist of three basic sections the policies taken by the Soviet Union leading to the famine, their policies during the famine and a section focusing on the famine itself. For section C the one source will be two of Walter Duranty's articles in the New York Times and the other Robert Conquest's book Harvest of Sorrows: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine.
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B: Summary of Evidence
Stalin had introduced forced collectivization in 1928. The policy was meant to combine the smaller farms into larger ‘more efficient’ collective farms called kolkhozes. The 25 million peasant farmsteads were turned into 200,000 collective farms. This forced collectivization however, was highly unpopular among the peasants who resisted in a variety of ways including the slaughtering of their live stock as well as the burning of their crops culminating in large scale revolts braking out in mostly non-Russian areas including Ukraine. Such peasants were then bunched under the term “Kulaks” on which he declared “war”. It is estimated 5 million Soviet citizens were eventually classified as kulaks and either stripped of their land to be given the poorest land in the area, were deported to other nearby regions of the country or, in extreme cases to distant inhospitable regions without shelter or resources, or sent to gulags. The overall result was the inverse of what had been desired- rather then increasing the food output, the grain output dropped and livestock numbers fell; “famine was the natural outcome”.
The Holmodor refers specifically to such famine within Ukraine between 1932-33 which was part of a larger famine within the Soviet Union. The meaning of the word itself is debated, but is often translated as “death by hunger”. The actual number of casualties is recognized to be somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million though estimates vary. Cannibalism became widespread as the starving became more and more desperate resulting in the publishing of slogan by the Soviet authorities “Eating dead children is barbarism”. Disease, particularly typhoid, was widespread.
The Soviets pursued a number of policies during the famine 1932, introducing the law “On Safeguarding Socialist Property” which made stealing food punishable by death . The borders of the Ukraine were sealed by Red Army Units, and when aid arrived it was sent to all areas except the Ukraine. People trying to flee were rounded up and returned to famine stricken areas. The government went house to house in Ukraine removing all grain; in March 1933 220,000 starving people who left trying to find grain were returned as soon as they were caught. The quota was cut three times before the famine ended in 1934 when Stalin called a stop to the forced seizure of grain.
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C: Evaluation of Sources
Harvest of Sorrows: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine
Written by well respected Robert Conquest, viewed by many as one of the foremost Soviet historians, the book has been described as “(t)he first major scholarly book on the horrors of collectivization” and hailed as “the most comprehensive history of the soviet agricultural crisis,” especially as Conquest himself states his focus on the Holmodor. However, having been published before the opening of the Soviet Archives, the book omits numerous sources that have come to light which indicate that many of the numbers and facts used in the book exceed the actual numbers. Furthermore, Conquest has since rescinded his claim in the book that the Holomodor was an intentional policy, instead saying that had Soviet policy of collectivization and dekulakization been dropped when the famine became eminent many lives could have been saved. Many of the book’s detractors claim that that the book is merely propaganda with “more than half of the references are come from extreme-right-wing Ukrainian émigrés”; As one of the advisors of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Conquest's true motives for the book have become suspect.
The second source consists of two articles by Walter Duranty- the now infamous “Russians Hungry But Not Starving” published on March 31st 1933 and the second less known piece “Soviet Industry Shows Big Gains” published the following week on April 6. At the time they were written the two pieces were valuable both as a “first hand account” and the fact Walter Duranty was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for his work on the Soviet Union. Also the pieces were published in the New York Times one of the most respected newspapers. However it has since been proven that famine occurred, which Duranty had flatly denied in both pieces. In fact efforts have been made to rescind Duranty's Pulitzer Prize and he was referred to by fellow journalist Malcolm Muggeridge as “the greatest liar I have met in journalism”.
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D: Analysis
The famine is considered one of the greatest national calamities of modern Ukrainian history, an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe. The famine is such a flash point that the Ukrainian Communist Party refused to even acknowledge that it occurred until 1990, over 55 years after it happened. The current Ukrainian president has announced his attention to make denial of the Holodomor illegal. To date over 19 countries other then Ukraine have recognized it as an act of genocide and the European Parliament adopted a resolution on October 23, 2008 recognizing the famine calling it “an appalling crime against the Ukrainian people, and against humanity” and calling “on the countries which emerged following the break-up of the Soviet Union to open up their archives on the Holodomor”. The document also “strongly condemns these acts, directed against the Ukrainian peasantry, and marked by mass annihilation and violations of human rights and freedoms”.
But was the famine actually the result of a genocidal policy by Stalin? Duranty, possibly the most prominent journalist in the Soviet Union, completely denied the famine, claiming that “conditions are bad, but there is no famine”. His sources were “Soviet commissariats and in foreign embassies with their network of consuls, [...] Britons working as specialists and from my personal connections, Russian and foreign”, sources he fails to ascribe a name to, are “more trustworthy information than I could get by a brief trip through any one area”. He instead inserts any deaths are the result of “diseases due to malnutrition.” A number of prominent Westerners in 1934 agreed with him. However there can be question now of the falsity of their reports especially with the Soviet admitting its occurrence in the 80s and the Ukrainian Communist Party adopting a resolution in 1990 also acknowledging the disaster took place. In fact Duranty's work has become so discredited an attempt to revoke his Pulitzer Prize was put forward and even encouraged by the New York Times.
Robert Conquest on the other hand refers to the catastrophe as a “terror famine” and “inflicted for its own sake” is supported to differing extents by large number of historians. His assertion that the famine was the result of “the setting of grain quotas far above the possible, removing of handful of foods and preventing of help from outside” is collaborated by historian Jasper Becker, “Stalin allowed relief to all other areas”, “Party deliberately and consciously took all grain it could from the peasants” and Robert Service, “starving majority […] had to fulfill state's requirements”. Peter Wiles says “Conquest's research has established beyond a doubt that the famine was deliberately inflicted there for the ethnic reasons to undermine the Ukrainian nation”. However not all historians agree with Conquest and Becker, both Martens and Tottle are critical of Conquest's arguments asserting that the famine was actually caused not by Stalin but by four factors, a civil war perpetrated by the Kulaks and Czarist elements, the drought, the typhoid epidemic and some by the disorder resulting from the economic and social changes and pointing to the drought rather then Soviet policy. Both Marten's and Tottle's arguments are vastly weakened by the Russian's Federation co-sponsorship of a 2003 resolution holding the Soviet Union responsible for the famine which appears to be an admission of guilt. The official documents in the archives likewise “convincingly demonstrates that the blame for the suffering and deaths of millions of people lies squarely with the Stalinist leadership”. However Robert Service notes using the definition of genocide as killing an entire ethnic group or nationality then the Holdomor doesn't really apply. Other nationalities in the Ukraine were in conditions just as poor as the Ukrainians and the grain quotas were cut multiple times 3 times at the report of famines.
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E: Conclusion
While clearly Duranty and Conquest don't agree on whether or not the Soviets are to blame for the Holomodor its clear they agree on the answer to whether or not it was genocide. Both believe that the famine was not the result of a genocidal policy when genocide is defined as “the killing of an entire national or ethnic group”. This is a position also supported by historians Service, Tottle, and Martens among others. But Service and Conquest do accuse Stalin of failing to act adequately to prevent or stop the continuation of the famine which means while he was not guilty of genocide the Soviet leader were guilty of a kind of extreme case of criminal malfeasance.
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F: List of Sources
Becker, Jasper. Hungry Ghosts Henry Holt and Company: New York, 1996
Conquest, Robert. Harvest of Sorrows: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine Oxford University Press US, 1987
Duranty, Walter. “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving”. New York Times New York, March 31st, 1933
Martens, Ludo. “The Resolution on Dekulakization”. Another View of Stalin 1995
Meurs, Mielke. Many Shades of Red Rowman and Littlefield, 1999
“Resolution on the Commemoration of the Holodomor, the Ukrainian artificial famine(1932-1933)”. European Parliament Oct. 23, 2008. June 9, 2009
Service, Robert. A History of modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladamir Putin Harvard University Press: New Haven, 2005
Sysyn, Frank. “The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-3: The Role of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Research and Public Discussion”. Studies in Comparative Genocide Ed: Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian, Palgrave Macmillan 1999. pg. 182
Tottle, Douglas. Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard Progress Books: Toronto Canada, 1987
Tucker, Robert C. “Stalinism as Revolution from Above”. Stalinism Ed: Robert C. Tucker Transaction Publishers, 1999
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