Turning the pages back... November 17, 1932 (11/17/02)

Turning the pages back...

November 17, 1932

This year marks the 69th anniversary of the Great Famine of 1932-1933, in which some 7 million to 10 million perished. Twenty years ago, relying on news from Svoboda and, later, The Ukrainian Weekly (which began publication in October 1933), this paper published a series of columns aimed at reminding and informing readers of this genocide. The following is excerpted from the column covering events of November 1932.

On November 17, 1932, Svoboda received news from Moscow which pointed out that the first five-year plan, that was actually scheduled to be completed in four years, had seriously harmed the economic situation in the country. The newspaper reported that workers went without food, that their working conditions were miserable, yet the government planned to institute its second five-year-plan.

On November 18, the headlines in Svoboda read, "The Bolsheviks Will Starve Out Disobedient Workers." A decree issued by the government stated that if they missed a day of work a month, the laborers would have their food stamp books taken away from them, assuring them of a death by starvation. The government had also warned that it would take away the people's living quarters if they did not report to work.

On November 21, Svoboda carried an article that labeled Walter Duranty, the Moscow correspondent of The New York Times, a friend of the Bolsheviks. He reported that the population had expressed dissatisfaction with the regime, but added that the people could not openly confront the government with petitions and protests. According to Duranty, work sabotage and unfulfillment of grain quota was the peasants' way of protesting the regime. He added that, although opposition to government was not organized, it was strong and this worried Communist leaders who continuously tried to break the peasants.

According to reports in the November 26 issue of Svoboda, two-thirds of the Soviet Union's population was starving and only had small quantities of potatoes and bread available to them. Except for the people in cities and in factories, of whom the Bolsheviks took special care, the people of the Soviet Union existed on virtually nothing, the newspaper said. Even the city dwellers' food was of very poor quality.

A November 28 article was headlined "Duranty Blames the Peasants and Workers for the Famine in the Soviet Union." Svoboda reported that Duranty said the workers refused to cooperate with the government's working conditions and thus caused their own demise. The workers' restlessness, their constant search for a better way of life, their inability to sit at one job for any length of time caused the chaos evident in the Soviet Union. This was also true of the peasant farmers who refused to work, who allowed acres of grain to rot as a protest to the five-year plan, the article said. However, Duranty assured his readers not to worry about the situation because the people of the Soviet Union "know how to tighten their belts and live in great suffering." He added, "For this reason, the hunger in the Soviet Union will not cause any revolution or uprising against the government."

Source: "The Great Famine (Part XI, November 1932)," The Ukrainian Weekly, May 1, 1983, Vol. LI, No. 18.

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