October 20, 2017

“Send grain, grain, and more grain”

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Thus wrote Vladimir Lenin in 1918 to his followers in Ukraine. Lenin never wavered in his exploitation of Ukraine and its people. Nor did his gangster heirs.

“Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine” by Anne Applebaum is easy to read and difficult: easy because it is written with the author’s fluid clarity confirming what we’ve known for decades; hard because her subject is the Holodomor with all of its ghastly facets.

Reviewing “Red Famine” in the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard described how Ms. Applebaum “makes it clear beyond debate that the Holodomor …was a crime comparable with anything committed by the Nazis – a view that has caused some controversy but is so patently obvious after reading her book as to make the controversy seem ridiculous”.

Ukrainians will find it refreshing to discover that much of the textual formation is the result of Ukrainian scholarship in North America and Ukraine. “Without the encouragement, advice and support of Prof. Serhii Plokhii and his colleagues at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute,” writes the author, “this book would not have been written” – a well-deserved tribute to an indefatigable and incredibly productive scholar.

Ms. Applebaum did her homework. The work of Oleh Wolowyna and Kos Bondarenko of Harvard’s MAPA project is recognized, as are the tireless research efforts of Marta Baziuk in Canada and Lyudmyla Hrynevych in Kyiv among many, many others. Robert Conquest is cited, and so is the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine headed by James Mace.

Ms. Applebaum begins with an overview of Ukrainian history, concluding: “Freedom for the peasants was, in effect, freedom for Ukrainians and a blow to their Russian and Polish masters.” Stalin knew this.

The opening chapter is devoted to the Ukrainian revolution of 1917. Lenin ordered his troops to enter Ukraine in disguise denying they were Russian, a strategy adopted by Vladimir Putin’s “hybrid warfare.” It was also a time when “Red Army soldiers and Russian agitators… recruited “the least successful, least productive, most opportunistic peasants” to confiscate land from their neighbors.

Warfare with the “kulaks,” defined as “class enemies,” was another Soviet innovation.

The next chapter features the Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno – “socialism without Bolshevism” was his rallying cry – and Symon Petliura, whose Directory “granted autonomous status to the Jews of Ukraine, encouraged Jewish political parties and funded Yiddish publications.” Pogroms by Red, White and Ukrainian armies were common, however.

Ms. Applebaum deftly describes the Soviet famine of 1921, when international aid was welcomed. Led by Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration, “Americans were feeding 11 million people every day” in 1922 “and delivering care packages to hundreds of thousands.” Hoover dropped the project once he discovered Soviets exporting food in order to secure machinery. Church property was confiscated. Resistance did not cease, and Lenin was forced to scale back to buy time. During the early 1920s private enterprise returned (New Economic Policy, or NEP), and Ukrainianization became Soviet policy. The temporary fix worked. Ukrainians found their voice. Ukrainian push-back returned – stronger than ever. Something had to be done.

Stalin introduced collectivization with his motto “press, beat, squeeze.” Increasingly impossible agricultural quotas were introduced in Ukraine. NEP tanked. Ukrainianization was blamed for the resulting shortages and was scrapped. “Petliurists” were everywhere. Shortages multiplied. Hiding food, all food, not just grain, became a crime. “Kulaks” were ripped from their homes, hunger increased. Internal passports were introduced. Ukraine’s borders were closed. Ukrainian Communists were “purged spotless,” Nikita Khrushchev later recalled, and replaced with Communists from Russia. Ukraine’s moral foundation crumbled. Family solidarity and village hospitality disappeared. Cannibalism ensued. Mass starvation, the Holodomor, became the new normal in 1932-1933. As Ukraine’s population shrank, Soviet Russians were brought in to replace the dead, seamlessly moving into abandoned homes.

All these horrors are diligently chronicled by Ms. Applebaum with copious sprinkles of survivor testimonies throughout her text. Although the exact number of victims will never be known, Ukrainian scholars have agreed on a figure of 3.9 million.

Gareth Jones reported on the famine in the British press. The New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty quickly denied it. “These conditions are bad,” wrote Duranty, “but there is no famine.” As late as 2015, Sputnik News, a Russian government website, published an article in English titled “Holodomor Hoax” citing Douglas Tottle’s long-discredited 1987 book, “Fraud, Famine, and Fascism.” Mention of the Holodomor was dismissed as a “fascist rant.”

In her final chapter Ms. Applebaum turns to Ukraine today. “Certainly the elimination of Ukraine’s elite in the 1930s… continues to matter. Even three generations later, many of Ukraine’s political problems, including widespread distrust of the state, weak national institutions and a corrupt political class, can be traced directly back to the loss of that first post-revolutionary patriotic elite” – that might have led the Ukrainian people – was “abruptly removed… The political passivity in Ukraine, the tolerance of corruption and the general wariness of state institutions, even democratic ones – all of these contemporary Ukrainian pathologies date back to 1933.”

Moscow remains what it has always been: brutal, disingenuous and greedy for Ukraine’s rich soil. “Today’s Russian government uses disinformation, corruption and military force to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty just as the Soviet government did in the past,” concludes Ms Applebaum. “As in 1932, the constant talk of ‘war’ and enemies also remain useful to Russian leaders…” When writing about Ukraine, today, “Kulaks, Petliurists and counter-revolutionaries” are no longer mentioned by the Russian press, but “fascists” and “Nazis” are everywhere.

Mr. Putin’s game plan has backfired. “Thanks to Russian pressure the nation is unifying behind the Ukrainian language as it has not done since the 1920s…In the end, Ukraine was not destroyed. The Ukrainian language did not disappear… neither did the desire… for a Ukrainian state that truly represented Ukrainians.”

There is no excuse for not buying this book. Buy two copies – one for your family, the other for an American friend who may have doubted your past “rants.”

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