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By Valentyn Moroz
Institute for Historical Review
Paper Presented to the Sixth International Revisionist Conferences
Journal of Historical Review
Summer, 1986
An indicative feature of the mass media's portrayal of modern history is the
striking contrast between the heavy volume of "Holocaust" material and the
silent treatment given to the appalling record of Soviet mass slaughter,
even though the number of Stalin's victims alone vastly exceeds even the
most exaggerated figures of alleged "Holocaust" victims. While names like
Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau have been unforgettably engraved into our
collective consciousness, few Americans recognize Vorkuta, Kolyma, or any of
the many other Soviet camps where at least twenty million people are
conservatively estimated to have perished. And whereas Americans have been
taught to instantly recognize the name of Heinrich Himmler, hardly anyone
has heard of Soviet secret police chiefs Nikolai Yezhov or Genrikh Yagoda,
each of whom murdered many more people, and in less time, than Himmler is
reputed to have killed.
The gruesome record is well documented. Nobel prize-winning author Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn has detailed the horrors of the Soviet concentration camp
system, which held up to fifteen million prisoners at a time. In The Gnat
Terror, British historian Robert Conquest cautiously estimated the number of
Stalin's political victims at 20 to 30 million. (Stalin once privately
admitted to Churchill that some ten million kulaks had been killed for
resisting the confiscation of their farms.) In Stalin's Secret War, Nikolai
Tolstoy exposes as a fraud the official Soviet claim, widely parroted by the
Western media, that 20 million Soviet citizens were killed by the Axis
during the Second World War. Tolstoy demonstrates that most of those 20
million were actually victims of the Soviet regime. Russian historian Anton
Antonov-Ovseyenko estimates in A Time of Stalin that the Soviet rulers have
killed more than eighty million of their own people to keep themselves in
power.
Stalin's single most horrific campaign was probably the organized mass
starvation of 1932-1933, which he used as a weapon to totally crush peasant
resistance to the forced collectivization of agriculture. Soviet military
units confiscated all available food in vast areas, condemning the
inhabitants to death by hunger. As Conquest points out, this is perhaps the
only case in history of a purely man-made famine. He estimates that the
campaign claimed five to six million lives, including more than three
million Ukrainians. Other historians have put the number of Ukrainian famine
victims at six or even seven million. An important new work on this subject
is Miron Dolot's moving memoir, Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust,
which includes a valuable introduction by Adam Ulam.
In the following essay, Ukrainian historian Valentyn Moroz dissects the
origins of the imposed famine of 1932-1933. He takes exception to the
generally accepted view that the campaign was carried out for purely
socioeconomic reasons, and holds instead that the decisive motivation was
Moscow's need to maintain the multi-national Soviet Russian empire. Stalin
destroyed the independent Ukrainian peasantry, Moroz writes, because it was
the foundation and Respring of Ukrainian nationalism.
-- Mark Weber
In 1921, at the Moth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it
was resolved that the country's non-Russian nations (nationalities) required
assistance:1
a) to develop and strengthen locally Soviet statehood in such forms as are
applicable to the national and social conditions of these nations;
b) to develop and strengthen locally, in their native languages, the legal
system, administrative and economic organs, and government organs,
consisting of local people who are acquainted with the living conditions and
mentality of the local population;
c) to develop locally the press, schools, the theater, social clubs, and all
cultural and educational institutions in their native languages;
d) to create and develop a wide spectrum of courses and education
institutions in both the humanities and the technical and professional
fields in their native languages ... Nationalism and Genocide 209
-
Thus began the policy known as "korenizatsiia" or "return to the roots,"
which is an instructive and very interesting phenomenon in the history
of-the modern Russian empire. In Ukraine this policy became known as
"ukrainizatsiia" or "Ukrainianization." In fact, this term was widely used
in official documents during the 1920s. The Edict of 1923 described
Ukrainianization with these words:2
- ... The people's government acknowledges the necessity ... of concentrating
the attention of the state in the near future on broadening the knowledge of
the Ukrainian language. The formal equality of the two most widely used
languages in Ukraine-Ukrainian and Russian-has so far been insufficient. The
processes of life, as experience has indicated, in reality favor the
predominance of Russian. To remove this inequality the government will
implement a series of practical measures which, while guaranteeing the
equality of every language used on Ukrainian territory, must safeguard a
position for Ukrainian corresponding to the size and strength of the
Ukrainian nation on the territory of the Ukrainian nation on the territory
of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
These days there is a tendency to regard this policy of Ukrainianization as
a tactical ploy by Moscow to expose and destroy all patriotic Ukrainians.
This is an extreme view. Obviously, Moscow had tactical considerations in
introducing this policy. But it should be understood that Moscow was forced
to adopt this policy. The impulse behind Ukrainianization came from far
beyond the walls of the Krenllin and emerged from quite different sources.
The Revolution of 1917 stimulated a powerful renaissance among the
non-Russian nations' of the Russian empire and this process continued even
after these peoples were militarily subdued by the Soviet Russian forces.
National development found means of self-expression even under the
conditions of Soviet rule. While the facts and figures of the expansion of
Ukrainainization are of interest for their own sake, even more interesting
is the story of how the people involved found the means of carrying out this
process of national development under the conditions of totalitarian
one-party rule. This was possible because a kind of second political party,
which was never proclaimed and formalized as such, existed during the 1920s.
This alternate party was private enterprise.
The both Congress of the Communist Party symbolically announced the
introduction of the "new economic policy" or NEP in 1921 and shortly
thereafter was also forced to proclaim the "korenizatsiia" policy of a
return to native roots. New opportunities for private enterprise in economic
life automatically also brought about a national renaissance among the
non-Russian peoples. The "new economic policy" (NEP) not only meant a total
change in economic life but in social and cultural life as a whole. Private
entrepreneurs began demolishing totalitarianism in countless different ways.
A shop owner operating his own business or a doctor with his own practice
quickly became independent of the commissar with the red cloth on his table.
They were soon also regarded as socially higher. And although these
entrepreneurs had to recite the Communist slogans and jargon whenever
required, the free market and not the Party came to govern their lives. Like
the legendary genie suddenly released from his bottle, free enterprise
spread swiftly.
This meant that, in practice, life became pluralistic, despite the protests
of orthodox Communists concerned about the purity of party doctrine. And all
this gave subconscious moral strength to the national movements. One felt
able to "breathe" and express oneself at last. In Ukraine many associations
of artists and writers were formed. An innovative and experimental
theatrical life began to develop. In such conditions it was natural that
legally sanctioned competition between the Ukrainian and Russian national
influences would eventually develop. Among those who recognized this was
Dmytro Lebed, who coined the theory of the "struggle between two cultures"
in which the state should not intervene.
-
From the outset the Russians regarded Ukrainianization as a temporary
political phenomenon and accordingly sought to make it a purely formal
letter, not to be taken seriously. For example, during a certain party
conference an economic administrator from an outlying district, after
listening to resolutions on the necessity of having administrators use
Ukrainian in their official work, began speaking to his district director in
Ukrainian. To this the official replied in Russian: "Speak like a human
being!" But despite such resistance, a virtual army of patriotic Ukrainian
academics and other culturally and politically active individuals greatly
furthered the process of Ukrainianization. Supporters of this process of
national renaissance came into high and sometimes even key positions.
Because of Russian chauvinist resistance, Ukrainianization didn't really
begun to develop until 1925. A 1927 letter from the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Ukraine to the Communist International (Comintern) dealt
with numerous "distortions" regarding the Ukrainianization process:3
- These distortions lie in the ignoring of and failure to value adequately the
national question in Ukraine (which is frequently masked by internationalist
phrases), particularly:
1) in the belittling of Ukraine's significance as a part of the USSR, in the
attempt to interpret the creation of the USSR as the actual liquidation of
the national republics;
2) in the instruction that the party remain neutral toward the development
of Ukrainian culture, in the interpretation of it as backward and "rural"
compared to Russian "proletarian" culture;
3) in the attempt to maintain at all costs the dominance of the Russian
language in the governmental, social, and cultural life of Ukraine;
4) in the formalistic attitude towards the development of Ukrainianization,
which is often acscepted only theoretically;
5) in the uncritical repetition of chauvinistic and imperialistic views
about the so-called artificiality of Ukrainianization, the unintelligibility
of the "Galician" language for the nation, and so forth, and in cultivation
of these views within the party;
6) in the attempt to hinder the implementation of the policies of
Ukrainianization in the towns and among the proletariat, confining it only
to the villages;
7) in the frequent tendency to exaggerate isolated cases of distortion in
the implementation of Ukrainianization, and in the attempt to portray these
as an entire political system which violates the rights of national
minorities (Russians, Jews, etc.).
It was characteristic of the time that the Communist Party of Ukraine could
bypass the Central Committee in Russia and appeal directly to the Communist
International, even though it was still a part of the all-encompassing
"Soviet" Communist party. This is another indication of the pluralism and
national self-expression which de facto manifested itself under conditions
of Soviet rule, despite and in opposition to totalitarian doctrine.
-
The record shows that Ukrainianization was an important and very real
development. Its impact may be compared to a torpedo exploding a dangerously
threatening hole in the hull of the imperial ship of state. Millions of
Ukrainian children were now being taught in Ukrainian. This was something
for which several generations of Ukrainians had fought. In 1930 an
astonishing 89 percent of the books published in Ukraine were printed in the
Ukrainian language. That same year, the 11th Congress of the Communist Party
of Ukraine reported:4
- ... A turbulent increase in Ukrainianization is apparent among the
proletariat, particularly among its chief groups. Along with this there is
an indisputable and systematic increase in the number of Ukrainians in the
proletariat .... During the past three years the number of people who can
read, write, and speak in Ukrainian has greatly increased .... The
professional associations of Ukraine should take it upon themselves, as
leaders of the masses, to ensure the availability of cultural services in
Ukrainian for the working masses and also to make certain that the movement
inspires the workers towards cultural and national development ....
These three elements -- the schools, the press, and the Ukrainianization of
the proletariat -- are a strong base which will guarantee a rapid and
unprecedented development of a Ukrainian culture which is national in form
and proletarian in content.
All this created unease in Moscow, where it was understood that the
continuation of this process would eventually mean the end of Russian
hegemony in Ukraine. Two tendencies became apparent during the years of
Ukrainianization which raised ominous questions about the future of the
Russian empire.
-
Firstly, the major role of the village in the process of Ukrainianization
became obvious. The village had long been recognized as the conserving
bastion of national traditions. But now it was also clearly a powerful
impetus for Ukrainianization in the towns and cities as well. The most
talented Ukrainian national authors and cultural leaders of the 1920s were
from the villages, which provided a solid base of some forty million people
for the development of Ukrainianization. Ukrainian blood from the villages
flowed into the veins of new Ukrainian social and cultural institutions
developing in the cities. As these structures grew visibly stronger it
became increasingly evident that this powerful and turbulent stream would
eventually sweep aside all Russian influence. Joseph Stalin, the most
important Bolshevik theoretician on the national question, clearly
understood the crucial importance of the village in this process. In a
speech to the both Soviet Communist Party Congress in 1921 he pointed out:5
- It is obvious that although the Russian element is still predominant in
Ukrainian cities, within a short period of time these cities will
doubtlessly be Ukrainianized. Forty years ago Riga was a German city, but
because the village population moves to the cities and determines their
character, Riga is now a Latvian city. Fifty years ago every city in Hungary
had a German character, but now each is Hungarian. The same can be said for
the cities of Ukraine because the village population will move to the
cities. The village is the representative of the Ukrainian language and this
language will penetrate every Ukrainian city and there become the dominant
language.
Secondly, a clear distinction developed between archaic and modern
nationalism. The first could express itself only in traditional and limited
forms. It was thus able to co-exist for many years within a colonial
structure, within the framework of an alien empire, and dominated by a
foreign dynasty. In contrast, the modern form of nationalism was aggressive
and dynamic, intolerant of colonial structures and inclined to demolish
them. It was characterized by an alliance of the village and a national
intelligentsia which emerged from native ethnic roots. (This modern form of
nationalism brought down the European colonial empires in Asia and Africa
during the 1940s and 1950s, and was accompanied by major conflicts and
social upheaval.)
-
The process of Ukrainianization during the 1920s gave birth to a concept
which had the potential of becoming an umbrella or screen behind which
meaningful Ukrainian nationalism could develop under the new conditions of
Soviet rule. This concept was best formulated by the writer Mykola
Khvyloviy, who coined the slogans "Away from Russia!" and "We can do without
a Russian conductor." Even the titles of his essays (such as "Russian
Slops''l convey the new atmosphere and direction which emerged from
Ukrainianization. With this concept, Ukrainian cultural, social and even
political development could be furthered using acceptable "proletarian"
jargon. In his polemical dispute with Russian newspapers, Khvyloviy wrote:6
- Today, as Ukrainian poetry follows its own direction, Moscow is no longer
able to tempt it with baubles .... And this is not because this or that
Ukrainian participant in the dispute is more talented Cap this or that
Russian (God forbid!) but because the Ukrainian reality is more complex than
the Russian, because we have before us different tasks, because we are the
young class of a young nation, because our literature is young ....
Because our literature has at last found its own path of development, the
question now lies before us: Which of the world's literatures should we
follow? In any case, not Russian literature. That is absolutely crucial. We
must not confuse our political union with literature. Ukrainian poetry must
move away from Russian literature and its influence as soon as possible. The
Poles would never have given us Mickiewicz if their orientation towards
Russian art had not ceased. The fact is that Russian literature has been
weighing us down for centuries, like a master who has trained our mentality
into slave-like imitation. So, to feed our young art with Russian literature
is to restrain its development. We are aware of proletarian ideas without
the hetp of Russian art. To the contrary, we, as representatives of a young
nation, will more easily sense these ideas and will more quickly recreate
them in suitable works of art. We will orient ourselves towards western
European art, towards its style and methods.
We have philosophized enough. Let us at last use our guide. We do so not
with the intention of harnassing our art to yet another foreign wagon, but
in order to free it from the suffocating atmosphere of backwardness. We will
go to Europe to learn, but in a few years we will return burning with a new
light. Do you hear what we want, Moscow-lovers with your Russian slops? So,
death to the Dostoyevskys! Let us begin a cultural renaissance!
It is also characteristic of the time that Khvyloviy came from a Russified
milieu. This itself was his inspiration. Khvyloviy, who had been named
Fitilov, knew from personal experience the swamp-like world of Russified
Ukrainians. He thus knew best how to fight against it. The most effective
preacher is a Saul converted into a Paul.
As Moscow watched, new institutions were developing which were both
Communist and Ukrainian. Along with others, Khvyloviy exclaimed: "We are
aware of proletarian ideas without the help of Russian art." The next and
inevitable stage in the realization of the slogan "Away from Russia!" would
have been the political separation of Ukraine from Russia. And that would
have meant the collapse of the Russian empire. As everyone realized, Russia
without Ukraine would automatically be reduced to the small realm (khanate)
of Moscovy it had once been in the 16th century before Tsar Peter I.
The successful development of Ukrainianization (and of parallel national
developments in other Soviet republics) was not limited to literary life.
The non-Russian nations of the USSR chalked up other important achievements
which threatened Russian hegemony. One was the establishment of "native"
(territorial) armies. Out of a total of 17 army divisions based in Ukraine
in the late 1920s, eight were "native" divisions consisting almost entirely
of Ukrainians. These divisions also used Ukrainian as the language of
communication and military command. Ukrainian was also the language of
instruction in some military schools. Other non-Russian peoples had similar
military formations. There were two Byelorussian divisions, two Georgian,
and one Armenian, as well as one Tatar regiment, one Tadzhik regiment, and
so forth. National non-Russian educational systems also developed. Under the
direction of the Ukrainian minister of education, Hryhory Hrynko, an
educational system developed in Ukraine which differed in every way from the
Russian form. In economic life Volobuyev introduced the concept by which
Ukraine would develop a national economy separate from Russia. And so it
went in every sphere of Ukrainian life.
Moscow understood that if this process was allowed to continue for another
decade the Soviet Russian empire would break up along national lines, much
as the Austro-Hungarian empire had at the end of the First World War. The
Kremlin rulers realized another essential reality: the empire could only be
held together with totalitarianism. And that meant totalitarianism in every
sphere of life. Only absolute state power could guarantee a unified empire.
Although Russian chauvinistic opposition to the Ukrainian renaissance never
completely disappeared, it was ineffective during the 1920s for two reasons.
Firstly, private enterprise automatically brought with it pluralism in other
spheres of life. It was comparable to fresh rain falling on the young shoots
of the national movement. Secondly, the national awakening unleashed by the
revolution of 1917 burgeoned during the decade of the 1920s.
The historical pendulum began to swing in a different direction at the close
of the 1920s. The energy of the national renaissance was depleted,
indicating the beginning of a decline. The rerrouDed imperial forces sensed
that the time had come to strike back. Their revenge took three forms: 1)
The elimination of private property in the villages and the imposition of
totalitarian agriculture in the form of the collective farm ("kolhosp" or,
in Russian, "kolkhoz"); 2) The uprooting of private enterprise in industry
and trade; 3) The annihilation of pluralism in the arts. All cultural
associations were replaced by unitary cultural unions, one each for writers,
artists, journalists, and so forth.
The crucial essence of this program was the annihilation of the traditional
village structure which had always been the nation's foundation. Stalin
recognized the key role of the village in the movement for national
liberation. "The village is the major army in a national movement," he
wrote. "Without the village the movement becomes impossible. This is what we
mean when we say that the national question is, in effect, the village
question."7
In planning the artificial famine of 1933, Moscow sought to strike a fatal
blow at the village structure, not because it was socially troublesome or
economically disadvantageous, but because it was the lifespring and resource
foundation of the vital national spirit. Postishev, who was sent to Ukraine
in 1933 as Moscow's plenipotentiary, stated this clearly: "The mistakes and
oversight of the Communist Party of Ukraine in the realization of the
nationalities policy of the party was one of the major reasons for the
collapse of agriculture in l931-1932."8
This one sentence is enough to show that the national question triggered the
catastrophe of 1933. The Plenum in 1933 and the 12th Congress of the
Communist Party of Ukraine in January 1934 both declared that "the greatest
danger in Ukraine is local Ukrainian nationalism."9 This marked'a turning
point in the Kremlin's nationalities policy. Until then the greatest danger
in the nationalities question was officially "Russian imperialistic
chauvinism." At the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine,
Postishev declared that "1933 was the year of the defeat of Ukrainian
nationalist counter-revolution."10 Moscow thus regarded the catastrophe of
1933 as an aspect of the struggle against Ukrainian national renaissance.
The village and national aspects of this catastrophe were closely
interconnected. In the spring of 1933, when millions of Ukrainian villagers
were starving to death, Soviet forces carried out mass executions across
Ukraine. Two population groups were targeted for extermination: the
intelligentsia and Ukrainain Communists who had once belonged to other
parties. The census figures of 1926 and 1939 indicate that the Ukrainian
population decreased by ten percent during this period, while the number of
Russians increased by 27 percent.11 The reason for this startling contrast
was explained by a witness of the 1933 famine: "There were two villages on
the border between the Ukrainain Soviet Socialist Revublic and the Russian
Soviet Socialist Republic. On the Ukrainian side ; everything was taken
away, on the Russian side there were normal corn taxes and everything went
according to plan. The Ukrainians climbed onto the roofs of passing trains
and traveled to Russia to buy bread."12
-
Historians have concluded that Ukraine lost 80 percent of its creative
intelligentsia during the decade of the 1930s.13 Thus, Ukrainian culture
suffered even more acutely than Ukrainian village life. While 80 percent of
the books published in Ukraine in 1930 were printed in Ukrainian, in 1934
this figure had fallen to only 59 percent.14 At the 11th Congress of the
Communist Party of Ukraine in 1930 there was talk of "the turbulent rise of
Ukrainialization" and of the necessity for its continuation. In 1934, at the
12th Congress quite a different tone prevailed:15
- Before the November Plenum alone, 248 counter-revolutionaries, nationalists,
spies and class enemies-among them 48 enemies who were party members-were
exposed and expelled from Ukrainian research institutes and the Ministry of
Education. Since then, many more of these people have been unmasked. For
example, not long ago, in December, we were compelled to close down the
Bahaliy Research Institute of History and Culture because we discovered that
this institute, like numerous other academic organizations (such as the
Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopaedia and the Shevchenko Institute where Pylypenko
was administrator), was a nest of counter-revolution.
A key question irt this entire issue is this: To what extent were the
repressions of the 1930s carried out for socioeconomic reasons? Certainly
theksocial and economic motivations behind this policy of repression cannot
be ignored or overlooked. But these motivations must be understood within
historical context. Although these repressions were social in application,
they were carried out primarily to preserve Russian imperial power.
The central thesis of this essay is that socioeconomic considerations played
only an instrumental and auxiliary role in the policy of repression of the
1930s. The drastic socio-economic changes of this period were motivated
primarily by the desire to maintain Russian imperial hegemony and only
secondarily by economic considerations. In the struggle between orthodox
dogmatists and pragmatists within the Communist party in the early 1930s,
the defenders of doctrine were victorious. At the same time, however, the
momentum of their attack against the pragmatists gave them their
imperialistic and chauvinistic impulse.
The history of the Soviet system until the Second World War is normally
divided into three phases: 1) Military Communism, 1917-1921; 2) Temporary
tactical retreat in the form of the NEP, 1921-1929; 3) Further development
of Communism according to Marxist doctrine, from 1929. However, few
historians have considered that the characteristics of the third phase are
hardly pragmatic.
I would describe these three phases somewhat differently. The first phase
may be called a naive Communist experiment. During this period of military
Communism the principle of private enterprise was totally extinguished. The
new Soviet state confiscated as much of the villagers' production as it
desired. (In practice this was usually as much as it could find.) A black
market operated and without it life could not have continued even though
officially it was illegal even to sell one's own shoes. The economy quickly
fell into chaos. Suffice it to mention that only one blast furnace was
functioning in Ukraine in 1921.
It was obvious that this "pure Communism" would soon result in the total
collapse of the new system unless the new Soviet rulers recovered quickly
from their "orthodox" intoxication. The abrupt turn to pragmatism in 1921
proved effective. This NEP phase permitted extensive private enterprise in
agriculture and other aspects of economic life. It ended in 1929 with a
sharp return to the collectivized system. This change has been generally
regarded as a return to Marxist orthodoxy after a temporary retreat.
However, this view is erroneous. The socio-economic policy of the 1930s was
not a return to "pure" Communist orthodoxy. It was rather a synthesis of the
principle of collectivization and pragmatism dictated by exclusively
imperial interests.
The Communism described in Marx's Das Kapital is not realistic. As with any
ideology, Communism in practice must take into consideration concrete
national interests. The first Soviet phase of military Communism was only an
experiment. The new Soviet rulers believed that the mythical "world
revolution" and the utopian ideal of Communism would quickly usher in a
worldwide proletarian paradise. These fantasies utterly ignored national
considerations. The second NEP phase was a concession forced by
individualistic and national factors. Only in the third phase was Communism
integrated with Russian national interests. Marxist doctrine was adapted to
the needs of the "Third Rome" (Moscow). (A similar process occured in China.
After a series of uprooting experiments, a variant form of Communism was
finally developed which might successfully serve Chinese imperial
interests.)
A careful study of the Soviet collective farm system makes clear that it is
not consistent with pure Communist doctrine. While the land and all
agricultural implements are group property, houses, gardens, chickens, pigs,
cows and many other items remained the property of individual villagers. In
urban areas individuals continue to own such basic items as homes, holiday
houses, and automobiles.
Beginning with the Stalin era, the Soviet system has been characterized by
an ongoing combination of the collectivization principle and pragmatism.
However, the nature of this pragmatism is not at all economic. If economic
considerations were paramount, Moscow would long ago have disbanded the
collective farms and reintroduced private enterprise in economic life. The
collective farm system has brought Soviet agriculture to its knees and the
Soviet economy has still not recovered from the chronic depression caused by
Stalin's drastic experiments during the 1930s. Soviet pragmatism is thus
dictated by imperial and not economic interests. The relationship between
the principle of collectivization and pragmatism is adjusted according to
the interests of the empire. The collective farm worker category is not a
socio- economic category as much as it an imperial category, similar to the
"colon" class of the late Roman era. If villagers live according to the
principles of individual self-reliance and private enterprise, they maintain
a vital national awareness. This consciousness makes the collapse of any
empire inevitable.
Imperial self-interest necessitates the destruction of the villagers'
traditional way of life. The villager is transformed into a "proletarian"
who is neither tied to his land nor to his national heritage. Such rootless
people easily lose touch with their native localities and migrate to the
endless wastes of Siberia or Kazakhstan-from one end of the empire to the
other-in search of higher wages. Moscow's intention has been to assimilate
the non-Russian half of the Soviet empire. It is also interesting to note
that even during the worst economic periods of Soviet rule, there has always
been sufficient liquor available in the stores. This is one Soviet product
which has never been in short supply. In destroying national consciousness,
liquor has been as important as official Soviet propaganda. It's not
difficult to persuade a drunk "proletarian" that as far as his national
heritage is concerned "What's the difference?".
The collective farms are essential to the Soviet system, not because of
Marxist economic doctrine (Yugoslavia gets along without them), but to
maintain the empire. It is the Soviet Russian empire and not Communist
orthodoxy that bans private enterprise. This is a key fact in understanding
the nature of the Soviet system.
Thus, economic principles are ignored in favor of imperial interests. Not
even the catastrophic economic consequences of this policy induce Moscow to
change. Accordingly, the orthodox "purity" of Marxism has been abandoned. Of
course, Soviet text books and newspapers repetitiously insist that
everything is advancing "according to Marxist principles." But whoever has
the patience to read past the third page of Marx's Das Kapital (almost no
one in the Soviet Union has done so) realizes that the Kremlin ignores
numerous Marxist principles. One example is the notion of "the total
collapse of capitalism" which has not occured as Marx "scientifically"
predicted. Another is the Leninist thesis that the Soviet Union would not
require a standing army (only a limited "people's militia"), nor secret
diplomacy, and so forth. These things are never mentioned in the USSR. While
using Communist slogans for its own ends, the Soviet Russian empire has
simply discarded everything about Communism which might prove advantageous
to the non-Russian peoples.
The introduction of the collectivization and industrialization programs at
the end of the 1920s meant that the empire once again held the reins of
power tightly in its hands. During the chaos of the revolution these reins
were temporarily torn from its control. State policy shifted in different
directions during the 1920s in response to various forces. But when Moscow
recovered and fully realized the situation, it once again adapted to the
needs of the empire.
Although the impetus for the repressions of the 1930s is widely considered
to have been socioeconomic, often even by those who made policy, the real
motivation behind the repression was a subconscious and unexpressed need to
preserve the imperial system. The imperial instinct prompted the concrete
social forms of the repression as well as the kind of totalitarianism which
could be effective during the 1930s. If there had been no pressing imperial
interests or Russian chauvinism, the repressions of the 1930s would have
been only a tenth as severe. This is shown by comparing the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917 and the Armenian massacre of 1915. Foreigners who were in
Petrograd in late 1917 were astonished at how little blood was shed in the
Bolshevik seizure of power. When one class fights another, many shots are
fired but few people are killed. In contrast, an estimated two million
Armenians were slaughtered in 1915 in an effort by the Turkish (Ottoman)
empire to put an end to the Armenian national question. It is estimated that
one half of the Armenian nation was murdered.
These elementary analogies are enough to show that the murder of seven
million Ukrainians in 1933 could not have been motivated by socioeconomic or
"class" reasons alone. Conflicts claim millions of victims only in struggles
between nations, as in wars, colonial struggles, and so forth, when the
national question is paramount. Moscow needed a holocaust. The imposed
famine of 1933 and the whole range of repressive mass killings during the
1930s were an expression of the empire's struggle for self-preservation. It
was this instinct, and not the economic doctrine of collectivization, which
impelled the Kremlin to carry out the horrors of the 1930s. No one can say
how "real" socialist economics are supposed to work in practice. For
example, Sweden calls itself a socialist society and some regard it as a
model of socialism. But Sweden has never abolished private enterprise. And
although Poland has been under complete Soviet domination since 1945,
collectivized agriculture has never been introduced there.
An article entitled "The Ethnocide of the Ukrainians in the USSR," signed by
pseudonym Maksym Sahaydak, appeared in 1974 in the underground journal
Ukrainian News. After quoting from Stalin's speech to the both Soviet
Communist Party Congress of 1921, predicting that the cities of the Ukraine
will inevitably become Ukrainianized, the author concludes: "The invaders
dreaded this as they would an inferno and they still dread it today.
Bolshevik Moscow, headed by 'the father of all nations' (Stalin) did
everything it could to stop the Ukrainian city from becoming Ukrainianized.
This was the central reason for the famine in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933."
[16]
From a historical perspective the year 1933 in the history of the Russian
empire is analogous to 1848 in the Austrian empire, when the rulers in
Vienna preserved the realm from dissolution by taking effective measures to
repress the centrifugal national movements. This was the last great
convulsion and the last effective effort for self-preservation before the
final earthquake in 1918 brought about the collapse of the Habsburg empire.
Notes
Kess v resoliutsiiach i postanovleniia sezdov, konferentsii ip1enumov TC
(Moscow: 1954), Vol. 1, p. 559.
Entsydopediia Ukrainoznavstva (1949), Vol. 1(2), pp. 547-548.
Dva roky roboty. Zvit Tsentralnoho Komitetu KP (b) U. (Kharkiv [Kharkov]:
1927), pp. 57-58.
XI zyizd KP (b)U. Stenohrafichnyj zvit (Kharkiv; 1930), pp. 737-738.
X zyezd RKP(b). Stenohraficheskyj otchet (Moscow: 1963), p. 213.
Visti BUCVK (dodatok "Kultura i pobut"l, (1926).
I. Stalin, Marksysm i natsionalno-kolonialnyj vopros (Moscow: 1935), p. 152.
Ukrainskyj zbirnyk (Munich: 1957), Vol.
p. 71. 9.V.I. Hryshko, Ukrainskyj Ho1Okost 1933 (1978), p. 77.
Chrevonyj Shlach (Kharkiv: 1934), 2-3, p. 165.
The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book (New York and Toronto: Dobrus,
1955), Vol. 2, p. 129.
I. M-ko (I. Maystrenko), Do 25 richiia holodu 1933-ho roku. (Munich: Vpered,
1958), 7(92), p. 1.
Entsyclopediia Ukrainoznavstva (Paris and New York: 1959), Vol. 3, p. 1050.
U. Lavrynenko, Rostriliane Vidrodzheniia (Paris: 1959), p. 965.
XII zyizd KP (b)U. Stenohrafichnyi zvit (Kharkiv: 1934), p. 380.
Ukrainskyj Visnyk (Paris: Smoloskyp, 1975, reprint), 7-8, pp. 50-51.
Bibliographic information
Author:Moroz, Valentyn
Title:Nationalism and Genocide: The Origin of the Artificial Famine of
1932-1933 in Ukraine
Source:The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)
Date:Summer 1986
Issue:Volume 6 number 2
Location:Page 207
ISSN:0195-6752
Attribution:"Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739,
Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign
subscriptions $60 per year."
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p207_Moroz.html
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