|
Lecture by Dr. Terry Martin
Harvard University
For the Annual Commemoration of the Victims
of the Soviet-engineered Famine in Ukraine
Toronto, Canada, November 20, 2001
Summary by Larysa Iarovenko
"Dr Martin has found unequivocal evidence that Stalin was aware
of existing famine conditions. He was also able to establish a clear
linkage between the Famine and Stalin's personal view of Soviet
nationalities policy."
Dr. Martin has a forthcoming study regarding the causes of the
Famine in Ukraine.
Report from the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS)
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
TORONTO, CANADA.....On 20 November 2001, Harvard
University professor Dr. Terry Martin addressed an attentive
audience at the University of Toronto's Centre for Russian and East
European Studies (CREES) on the topic "Stalin and the Ukraine
Famine." The presentation was part of this year's (2001) annual
commemoration of the victims of the Soviet-engineered Famine
of 1932-33 in Ukraine.
The lecture was co-sponsored by the Petro Jacyk Program for the
Study of Ukraine administered by CREES, the Toronto Branch of the
Ukrainian Canadian Congress, and the Toronto office of the Canadian
Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Financial assistance was generously
provided by the Ukrainian Studies Fund at Harvard University.
The scholarly study of the events of 1932-33 in Ukraine has not
been an easy task. For more than fifty years the Soviet regime blatantly
denied the very existence of the Famine. With the onset of Perestroika
and the opening of Soviet archives, however, it became possible to
study the crimes of the Stalinist era in a new and concerted way, and
recent studies of the Famine have been enriched with many new facts
and points of view.
Some historians have argued that the Famine constituted a blunt
assault against Ukrainization and the Ukrainian elite; others have
regarded it as class-based state terror against the peasantry for its
opposition to collectivization.
Throughout the last ten years Dr. Martin has studied the role of
the nationalities factor in the tragic events of 1932-33 on an on-going
basis. In his prefatory remarks he noted that his most recent archival
revelations-correspondence between Stalin, vacationing at the Black
Sea resort of Sochi in the summer of 1932, and Molotov and
Kaganovich, who were subsequently dispatched to the Caucasus and
Ukraine-had compelled him to look more closely at the personal role
that Stalin played in the tragic events.
Dr. Martin has found unequivocal evidence that Stalin was aware
of existing famine conditions. He was also able to establish a clear
linkage between the Famine and Stalin's personal view of Soviet
nationalities policy.
Dr. Martin outlined four aspects of the Stalinist Terror of the early
1930s: (1) the Famine; (2) the mass deportations and (3) executions
of peasants; the criticism and curtailment of Ukrainization; and (4) the
wide-spread repression in Soviet Ukraine of Galician émigrés and the
rural and urban intelligentsia, including members of the Polish and
German minorities.
Dr. Martin noted that he had sought to establish the precise moment
when the nationalities factor came to play a leading role in these events
and who or what brought about such an abrupt change in state policy.
His research has led him to conclude that Stalin and his paranoid fear
of "losing" Ukraine were the catalyst for the evolution of tragic events.
In discussing the constellation of power bases in the Soviet state,
the speaker suggested that the tensions between the Ukrainian SSR
and Moscow are too simplistic an explanation for the state of affairs.
Instead, he proposed that it would be more appropriate to view the
situation as a struggle between the Ukrainian SSR and the Russian
SFSR for the attentions and support of the central apparat in Moscow.
One of the most disputed issues of the late 1920s was the delineation
of borders between the various Soviet republics. Dr. Martin noted
that at that time some eight million ethnic Ukrainians lived within the
territories of the Russian SFSR, and in certain places they formed
clearly Ukrainian national districts and towns. As a result of pressure
from Soviet Ukrainian leaders, in 1926 the Ukrainian language was
granted official status in those areas of the Russian Federation with
predominantly Ukrainian settlement. Throughout the latter 1920s the
central Party leadership acted as an intermediary in disputes between
the Ukrainian SSR and the Russian SFSR. Even as late as early 1932
Pravda published positive reports regarding the Ukrainization policy.
In Dr. Martin's opinion, this situation changed fundamentally in
1932, when the Soviet central government-personified by Stalin-no
longer took a neutral stance in these matters and began siding with
the interests of the Russian SFSR. One of the reasons was a shift in
Moscow's policies regarding the western borders of the USSR. The
anticipation that Ukrainians on both sides of the Soviet border would
be "reunited" proved to be unfounded.
In fact, the implementation of collectivization policies resulted in large-
scale attempts at emigration and protest marches along the border
against the Soviet clampdown on people wanting to emigrate. Moreover,
after Pilsudski's assumption of power in Poland the Soviet Union feared
(albeit groundlessly) military intervention from the West. At this point,
noted the speaker, the nationalities factor began playing a decisive role.
Dr. Martin has recently found documents that clearly show that Moscow
interpreted the Ukrainian Party elite's opposition to its perilously high
grain-requisition quotas as a negative consequence of Ukrainization. The
tone of Stalin's letters in the summer of 1932 became increasingly extreme:
he wrote "I think that we are giving Ukraine much more than is necessary";
that "the state of affairs in Ukraine is terrible"; that the CP(B)U "is not
a
Party, but a parliament"; and that we should do something, otherwise we
might lose Ukraine."
Kaganovich wrote to Stalin that the disruption of the grain
requisitions was caused by "agents of counter-revolutionary Ukrainian
organizations and Petliurites" who were secret collaborators of Pilsudski
and world imperialism.
As a consequence, in the latter part of 1932 the policy of Ukrainization
as rescinded, the Ukrainian Party elite was purged, and secret directives
increasing the peasants' already onerous grain deliveries to the state were
issued. These punitive acts led millions of deaths and left deep scars on
the
future development of the Ukrainian nation.
Dr. Martin indicated that the new information regarding the role of Stalin
and his closest collaborators provides the underpinnings for his forthcoming
study regarding the causes of the Famine in Ukraine, which will be based
on a greater level of detail and conceptualization about this tragedy.
Press Release, December 7, 2001
By Larysa Iarovenko
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB
Canada T6G 2E8
780 294 2972
FAX 780 492 4967
cius@ualberta
Bohdan Klid, Bohdan.Klid@ualberta.ca
www.ualberta.co/CIUS
www.ualberta.ca/CIUS/press-frame.htm
www.ukrainianstudies.org
Dr. Terry Martin, Assistant Professor of History
Davis Center for Russian Studies
Member-Committee on Ukrainian Studies
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI)
Coolidge Hall, Room 206
Harvard University
1737 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
617 495 9895
martin11@fas.harvard.edu
huri@fas.harvard.edu
FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY
|
back
