(The English-speaking world is oddly accustomed to a different transliteration of this word, "Holodomor," which is both artificial and misleading, linguistically signifying “mass deaths from freezing cold.” The correct term for our subject in Ukrainian properly transliterated is “Golodomor 1932-1933 rokiv,” showing that the word itself is spelled identically as Golodomor, both in Russian and in Ukrainian. I guess that the only reason for its improper transliteration is to send the deliberate message to the West that the tragic famine of 1932-1933 was somehow different, in a certain sinister way, in Ukraine, as compared to the same tragic famine causing even greater casualties in several other grain-producing areas of the USSR.
One more important note addresses the specific meaning of the word “Golodomor” [I refuse to use its disingenuous misspelling as “Holodomor,” which is insulting to any linguist’s intelligence]. Its correct denotation must be “massive deaths caused by a famine” and not “a deliberate state policy of mass murder by means of famine” as is often alleged.” Generally speaking, it is revoltingly reprehensible to use a great human tragedy in order to play ethnic politics, when such a boorish tool as outright linguistic deception is being shamelessly employed to promote one’s political agenda.
And lastly, the concept of mass famines in Russia cannot be reduced to the tragedy of 1932-1933. Ten years before that, there was a great famine in the Volga region of Soviet Russia caused by poor harvest aggravated by the devastation of the deadly Civil War. Immediately after World War II there was yet another famine, caused by the devastating effects of the war, waged on the Russian territory. There were several deadly famines prior to the twentieth century as well, but we are obviously focusing here on one particular famine, which was the deadliest of them all.)
As a specific term, Golodomor ought to refer to the total phenomenon of the deadly Soviet famine of 1932-1933, which affected most major grain-producing agricultural areas of the Soviet Union, including Northern Caucasus, Volga Region, South Urals, West Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. An estimated six to eight million people perished during this terrible period of Soviet history, primarily because of starvation, but the causes of this tragedy are subject to wildly different interpretations, as this issue is being intensely debated today. (This debate has been actually inherited from earlier times, when it was limited to a small group of Ukrainian nationalist exiles in the West, and did not amount to much more than the fringes of an all-pervasive anti-Soviet propaganda.)
There are reprehensible efforts, on the part of the anti-Russian elements in modern Ukraine, to misrepresent Golodomor as a genocidal policy of Moscow deliberately targeting Ukrainians, which is of course wickedly manufactured fiction designed to instill anti-Russian sentiments in the ethnically Ukrainian citizens of today’s Ukraine and in the free countries of the Western World. An accusation of this nature is vicious demagoguery, considering the territorial distribution of the numbers of Golodomor’s victims within the USSR. The number of the dead in Central Russia was 2 million; in Kazakhstan it was 1.7 million; in Northern Caucasus it was around 1 million; and in Ukraine the number stood at 1.3 million. Take into account, however, that only a fraction of this number covers ethnic Ukrainians, as the majority of these agricultural lands is situated in Eastern Ukraine, populated largely by ethnic Russians.
There is a somewhat more sensible, yet still deficient, explanation of the causes of Golodomor, provided by the studies conducted by the EU community. These have concluded that Golodomor was not caused by a deliberate intent to exterminate the Ukrainians, but by the highly inefficient policies of the Soviet government, which was expropriating the grains from hungry populations in order to sell them to the West to finance the ongoing industrialization of the country. This explanation is only partially true, as, even though, indeed, a large amount of grain was sold to the West during this time, the nation had enough grain left to feed the people and avoid the tragic famine.
It is also true that the particular years 1932-1933 were characterized by lower than average harvest, yet this is not to say that the overall diminished yield of the harvested grain by itself could have produced such horrific results.
There was another factor involved here, which happened to be the real cause of the famine. It is overlooked today, perhaps, for political reasons, thus bringing Golodomor into the domain of "history unknown, ignored, and misunderstood."
Here is the truth, though. There was a lot of grain in those grain-producing areas, where Golodomor actually happened, and there was a natural need for grain redistribution. Armed detachments of grain collectors were sent by the Soviet government to all the villages that had large surpluses of grain, to leave the villagers with the bare minimum, while expropriating the rest for the purposes of redistribution, and, yes, selling surpluses to the West for desperately needed hard currency. These detachments, however, were meeting stiff resistance from the wealthy villagers, who would habitually engage in the practice of hiding their grain, to prevent the collectors from taking it away from them (many intended to sell it to their less fortunate neighbors later on), to the point of burying it in the ground, where it was very hard to find. Realizing that such acts of sabotage must have been taking place in areas where they expected to find a lot of grain yet found none the collectors would naturally become enraged, and, following the harsh instructions from above to collect the grain at all costs, while punishing the concealers of the grain as saboteurs and traitors, they would often end up leaving the stubborn villages devoid of any grain to feed themselves, as punishment. A lot of the grain buried under the ground would also come to rot, when the only persons who knew its location were taken away and shot, or permanently deported, leaving the others without a clue as to where the grain had been hidden. Needless to say, the collected grains were never redistributed back to the areas that were expected to feed themselves. Thus we uncover the paradoxical fact that the deadly famine was spread exclusively across the areas rich in grain, while the areas poor in agricultural blessings, and thus presumably expected to suffer the most from the famine, managed to stay famine-free, being properly supplied by redistributed grains, in small amounts, yet sufficient for their survival.
For some reason, the big question addressing this paradox (why did Russia suffer from Golodomor in grain-rich areas only, but not in the grain-poor ones?!) is not being asked. Should anyone dare to ask it, there has to come an immediate realization that something is wrong with the picture painted by the investigators, who pay no attention to the factor which I have placed front and center in this entry. The final question therefore is not whose picture is right and whose picture is wrong, but whose picture has an answer for the objectively key question above and whose representation ignores this question completely, as there is no way it can find a sustainable answer to it.
One more important note addresses the specific meaning of the word “Golodomor” [I refuse to use its disingenuous misspelling as “Holodomor,” which is insulting to any linguist’s intelligence]. Its correct denotation must be “massive deaths caused by a famine” and not “a deliberate state policy of mass murder by means of famine” as is often alleged.” Generally speaking, it is revoltingly reprehensible to use a great human tragedy in order to play ethnic politics, when such a boorish tool as outright linguistic deception is being shamelessly employed to promote one’s political agenda.
And lastly, the concept of mass famines in Russia cannot be reduced to the tragedy of 1932-1933. Ten years before that, there was a great famine in the Volga region of Soviet Russia caused by poor harvest aggravated by the devastation of the deadly Civil War. Immediately after World War II there was yet another famine, caused by the devastating effects of the war, waged on the Russian territory. There were several deadly famines prior to the twentieth century as well, but we are obviously focusing here on one particular famine, which was the deadliest of them all.)
As a specific term, Golodomor ought to refer to the total phenomenon of the deadly Soviet famine of 1932-1933, which affected most major grain-producing agricultural areas of the Soviet Union, including Northern Caucasus, Volga Region, South Urals, West Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. An estimated six to eight million people perished during this terrible period of Soviet history, primarily because of starvation, but the causes of this tragedy are subject to wildly different interpretations, as this issue is being intensely debated today. (This debate has been actually inherited from earlier times, when it was limited to a small group of Ukrainian nationalist exiles in the West, and did not amount to much more than the fringes of an all-pervasive anti-Soviet propaganda.)
There are reprehensible efforts, on the part of the anti-Russian elements in modern Ukraine, to misrepresent Golodomor as a genocidal policy of Moscow deliberately targeting Ukrainians, which is of course wickedly manufactured fiction designed to instill anti-Russian sentiments in the ethnically Ukrainian citizens of today’s Ukraine and in the free countries of the Western World. An accusation of this nature is vicious demagoguery, considering the territorial distribution of the numbers of Golodomor’s victims within the USSR. The number of the dead in Central Russia was 2 million; in Kazakhstan it was 1.7 million; in Northern Caucasus it was around 1 million; and in Ukraine the number stood at 1.3 million. Take into account, however, that only a fraction of this number covers ethnic Ukrainians, as the majority of these agricultural lands is situated in Eastern Ukraine, populated largely by ethnic Russians.
There is a somewhat more sensible, yet still deficient, explanation of the causes of Golodomor, provided by the studies conducted by the EU community. These have concluded that Golodomor was not caused by a deliberate intent to exterminate the Ukrainians, but by the highly inefficient policies of the Soviet government, which was expropriating the grains from hungry populations in order to sell them to the West to finance the ongoing industrialization of the country. This explanation is only partially true, as, even though, indeed, a large amount of grain was sold to the West during this time, the nation had enough grain left to feed the people and avoid the tragic famine.
It is also true that the particular years 1932-1933 were characterized by lower than average harvest, yet this is not to say that the overall diminished yield of the harvested grain by itself could have produced such horrific results.
There was another factor involved here, which happened to be the real cause of the famine. It is overlooked today, perhaps, for political reasons, thus bringing Golodomor into the domain of "history unknown, ignored, and misunderstood."
Here is the truth, though. There was a lot of grain in those grain-producing areas, where Golodomor actually happened, and there was a natural need for grain redistribution. Armed detachments of grain collectors were sent by the Soviet government to all the villages that had large surpluses of grain, to leave the villagers with the bare minimum, while expropriating the rest for the purposes of redistribution, and, yes, selling surpluses to the West for desperately needed hard currency. These detachments, however, were meeting stiff resistance from the wealthy villagers, who would habitually engage in the practice of hiding their grain, to prevent the collectors from taking it away from them (many intended to sell it to their less fortunate neighbors later on), to the point of burying it in the ground, where it was very hard to find. Realizing that such acts of sabotage must have been taking place in areas where they expected to find a lot of grain yet found none the collectors would naturally become enraged, and, following the harsh instructions from above to collect the grain at all costs, while punishing the concealers of the grain as saboteurs and traitors, they would often end up leaving the stubborn villages devoid of any grain to feed themselves, as punishment. A lot of the grain buried under the ground would also come to rot, when the only persons who knew its location were taken away and shot, or permanently deported, leaving the others without a clue as to where the grain had been hidden. Needless to say, the collected grains were never redistributed back to the areas that were expected to feed themselves. Thus we uncover the paradoxical fact that the deadly famine was spread exclusively across the areas rich in grain, while the areas poor in agricultural blessings, and thus presumably expected to suffer the most from the famine, managed to stay famine-free, being properly supplied by redistributed grains, in small amounts, yet sufficient for their survival.
For some reason, the big question addressing this paradox (why did Russia suffer from Golodomor in grain-rich areas only, but not in the grain-poor ones?!) is not being asked. Should anyone dare to ask it, there has to come an immediate realization that something is wrong with the picture painted by the investigators, who pay no attention to the factor which I have placed front and center in this entry. The final question therefore is not whose picture is right and whose picture is wrong, but whose picture has an answer for the objectively key question above and whose representation ignores this question completely, as there is no way it can find a sustainable answer to it.
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