July 3, 1983

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FAMINE YEARS. PART XX

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May 1933

On May 1, 1933, Svoboda received news from a German newspaper, Koelnische Zeitung, which reported that the famine in “all of Russia” was growing worse and worse. According to reports, the populace ate dogs, cats and other animals, searching for salvation from hunger.

The German correspondent said people swelled from hunger and collapsed during work from physical exhaustion. He wrote that although the Communist regime had tried to carry out its grain-planting campaign, it could not force the peasants to work in the fields “with enthusiasm” when they had no grain to plant.

Also on May 1, Svoboda received a letter from one of its readers who had corresponded with his family in eastern Ukraine. The family wrote: “We inform you that we are all alive. You ask if we are healthy. How can one be healthy when one works every day from morning until night and never eats?” The author of the letter goes on to say that the family purchased baskets of potato peelings for 12 rubles and boiled this into a soupy mixture.

Jobs were available in the Soviet Union but these jobs paid very little, and there was no food to purchase.

On May 6, the Ukrainian Bureau in London reported that bloody battles raged throughout Ukraine as peasants struggled to obtain bread. According to the reports, peasants robbed the state grain storage houses, often getting into battles with secret police guards. Soviet authorities called the peasants’ rampages “bandit attacks” and responded to them with physical force.

On May 10, Svoboda carried news from the Soviet newspaper Komsomolska Pravda, which wrote about counterrevolutionary activities in Ukraine and especially attacked the publications of the ethnographic commission at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, calling these studies “kulak nationalism.”

The ethnographic studies included Ukraine within the boundaries of the Western world, not within the boundaries of Moscow-controlled lands and the Eastern world. The newspaper commented that the Communist Party must discourage this Ukrainian separatism and stressed that Ukrainian academics, literary writers, publicists and even the Ukrainian common folk (in their songs) must achieve unity between Ukraine and Moscow.

On May 11, Svoboda received news from Moscow that the Communist Party was once again purging Ukrainians – nationalists and separatists, throwing out anyone who participated in counterrevolutionary activity, belonged to any Ukrainian professional, cooperative, agricultural or other organization.

On May 12, the headlines in Svoboda read: “The War of the Hungry Populace for Bread Spreads.” The news reports had come from Moscow to Berlin and then were passed on to Svoboda. The reports stated that Soviet peasants were more and more adamant in their battle for bread. The battle was more organized, with leaders organizing riots at Soviet food stores and peasants robbing food transport cars to get at least a few morsels of food, the German press reported. Peasants caught stealing were executed, both clandestinely and in broad daylight. Often the homes of the peasants were ransacked while they were out in the fields.

The news reports also stated that the general belief was that the peasants’ revolts would grow larger and more spontaneous in character; it would be more difficult to suppress the movement of millions of the masses. If there was even a mediocre harvest, the state would see none of the grain until after the peasants were fed, the German newspaper reported. It added that the most catastrophic situation faced by the Soviets was in Ukraine, where the population “refuses to die as quietly as it did in 1921-22.”

On May 13, news from Prague, Czechoslovakia, reached Svoboda. It stated that the Soviet regime was once again readying itself for court trials against Ukrainian academics, and writers. The Soviets were scheduled to bring to trial members of what they called a “newly uncovered nationalist organization which had recently published a Ukrainian dictionary exclusive of words with Russian roots.” The Soviets stated that this was done intentionally to separate the Moscow “brother language from the Ukrainian language, thus causing a split between the two nations.” The Soviet regime also reported that the Ukrainians advocated switching to the Latin alphabet in order to bring Ukraine closer to the rest of Europe.

On May 16, Svoboda published an article in English from the Ukrainian Bureau in London. Following are a few excerpts from the article.

“Moscow (so it is said in the Soviet press) has taken up a ruthless fight against Ukrainian nationalism which, in spite of repression, was able to assert itself in the most varied forms and is opposing Moscow’s efforts toward unification. In the most recent issue of the newspaper Komsomolska Pravda, letters were published from village correspondents in Ukraine in which a picture of the real situation may be found. Everywhere in Ukraine – so it is said in this news from the village correspondent – in the collective and state farms, in the libraries and the schools, Ukrainian nationalists are established. Thanks to the neglect of the Commissariat for Agriculture and Education, the Ukrainian nationalists have succeeded in receiving influential posts in the party machine and in this way exercise influence on the Communist Party in Ukraine. These tactics of the Ukrainian nationalists are very similar to those of the kulaks.” The Soviet village correspondents continued:

“The Ukrainian nationalists are using the crisis in agriculture which has been in existence for such a long time to try to persuade the peasants that this crisis has only come about from collectivization and that collectivization leads to catastrophe in agriculture. Criticism of Stalin’s agricultural policy is very clearly intermingled with nationalist Ukrainian propaganda against the Moscow authorities.”

The Ukrainian Bureau commented on this news, saying:

“The people have been starving for many months and even leading Communist circles have lost faith in the regime. That Ukraine is hit particularly hard by famine is understandable. The Moscow government was anxious in the first place to make provision for the workers and the Red Army as these elements are the main supports of the Soviet regime. Therefore everything was taken from the peasants in the conviction that the peasants could always manage somehow. And even if 100,000 peasants perish, that, according to the Communist outlook, is not a great misfortune.

“Such a system could last one, two, three years without catastrophe. The reports of the English and American correspondents who have traveled in Ukraine and gotten in touch with peasants give us a picture of need before which all previous accounts pale. For many months on end the people have no bread. Acorns and the roots of various plants and at best oil cake provide the daily fare of the Ukrainian people. But even these substitute foods are coming to an end and it is still a long time to the next harvest.

“Every alteration in the international situation awakens in Ukraine a new hope that it might cause the fall of the Soviet government. For that reason also Hitler’s seizure of power in Germany has made a very great impression. For, apart from his attitude towards the Ukrainian question, they see him an enemy of communism who has all but succeeded in dealing the death-blow to communism in Germany. The downfall of communism in Germany means at the same time a great weakening of communism in the Soviet Union and, in the fall of communism, Ukraine expects her freedom.”

On May 17, Svoboda reported: “The Moscow Campaign Against Ukrainian Nationalism Expands.” This new report spoke about the arrests of Ukrainian intelligentsia, calling them “Petliurist intellectuals.”

On May 20, Svoboda ran the news that the 18th Convention of the Ukrainian National Association wrote letters to the Russian government and all European ambassadors, “protesting the exile of Ukrainians from Russia,” to Siberia. The news item stated that the letters represent 1.5 million Ukrainians in the United States.

On May 23, the Chicago Tribune office in Riga, Latvia, reported that Mikhail Kalinin, chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, and Vyacheslav Molotov, premier of the USSR, had traveled through the Soviet Union and witnessed the extent of the famine. The newspaper reported that the two Soviet leaders saw cannibalism and the spread of typhoid throughout the country.

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Around the world:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a worldwide appeal to 54 countries to unite and to strive toward better economic conditions. His appeal was met with great favor by almost all nations. One nation wary of this statement was France, which questioned whether the United States would remain on the sidelines, or get actively involved in this worldwide struggle for economic stability.

As Hitler’s attacks on the Jews intensified, the American Jewish Congress organized protests and demonstrations in the United States. In mid-May, Jews and their sympathizers, marched in New York (100,000 people), in Chicago (50,000) and in Philadelphia (20,000).

Asking for a halt to India’s pacifist war against Great Britain, Mohandas Gandhi once again went on one of his numerous hunger strikes, severely endangering his health.

On May 7, 150,000 Ukrainian youths from western Ukraine marched through the streets of Lviv, participating in the “Youth for Christ” convention organized by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. The youths, dressed in Ukrainian embroidered shirts and carrying blue and gold banners, marched through the city, sending the Polish officials into a rage over the massive demonstration.

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