aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] Montefiore on Holodomor & my comment

[Roman Serbyn <serbyn.roman@videotron.ca>]

There is an article by
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Holocaust by hunger: The truth behind Stalin's Great Famine:

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1038774/Holocaust-hunge
r-The-truth-Stalins-Great-Famine.html

I wrote a comment on the online publication, but I don't know if it will
appear, so I am joining it here, in case someone would care to read it.

******

This is a welcome addition to popular literature on the Great Famine. The
author is right to stress the ruthlessness of Stalin, his henchmen and the
Bolsheviks, who were not afraid to kill people by the million. The author
accurately identifies the goals of collectivization: “to break the backbone
of the peasantry”, “to shatter their independent spirit” and with the stolen
grain from the starving peasants to industrialize and “make Soviet Russia a
military super power”. Montefiore’s description of “the Great Turn” — the
destruction of the peasantry, the horrors of the famine, with
dekulakization, deportation, starvation, cannibalism, and so forth — can be
appreciated. 
 
There are, however, errors in his historical narrative that should be
pointed out, and unwarranted assertions that must be challenged. Stalin’s
musings about deporting Ukrainians revealed by Khrushchev refer to the post
WW II period and not to the time of the famine. Ukrainians, according the
1926 census numbered  28.5 million (as citizens of Ukr. SSR) and 31 million
(as an ethnic minority in USSR). If anything, the figures would be a million
or so higher in 1932. NEP was introduced in the beginning of 1921 because
agriculture was collapsing, and not in response to the famine, which began
only towards the end of that summer and continued until 1923. The first
famine (1921-1923) was, to a large extent, due to the requisitions practiced
by the Red Army during the Russian civil war (and wars of reconquest of the
seceding republics like Ukraine); peasants’ delight over the Bolshevik
seizure of power was rather short-lived.
 
Some of the author’s descriptions and claims lack precision or completeness.
The author fails to take into account that while “the Cossacks” formed a
more or less homogenous social group, they belonged to two different
nationalities. Most of the Kuban Cossack  were of Ukrainian background and
in the deportation of the Kuban Cossack stanytsias (settlements) the
national factor played a decisive role. At the beginning of the famine there
were some 8,000,000 ethnic Ukrainians living in RSFSR, mostly along the
Ukrainian border: the Kuban was 62% Ukrainian, the Don about 40 %. The rise
of Ukrainian national consciousness, and the “infiltration” of the party and
state institutions in these regions by “Ukrainian nationalists” was blamed
for the problems in grain procurement (read confiscations). As a result, on
14 December 1932, the Ukrainian language was banned in all schools, local
administration, mass media throughout the RSFSR. This and other national
factors in 1932-1933 tragedy are ignored by the author, thus giving the
whole presentation a rather lopsided interpretation.
 
Montefiore states that train tickets were restricted and internal passports
were introduced so that it became impossible for peasants to flee the famine
areas. Here he confuses two different issues: 1) passport system whose
purpose was to the main urban centres from growing and which came into
effect towards the end of the main period of the famine, and 2) a
Stalin/Molotov directive of 22 January 1933 closing cordoning off Ukrainian
SSR and the North Caucasus Territory (chiefly aimed at the Kuban) from the
rest of the Soviet Union to any peasant movement. This directive had a
specifically anti-Ukrainian factor which is completely ignored by the
author.
 
The author presents the argument often heard from Russian political and
academic deniers of the Ukrainian genocide, namely that, “because the famine
not only killed Ukrainians but huge numbers of Russians, Cossacks, Kazakhs
and many others as well, it can’t be termed genocide — defined as deliberate
killing of large numbers of a particular ethnic group.” What is surprising,
is that the author then defends this illogical position: “It may be a
strange defence, but it is historically correct.”
 
Well, I beg to differe: it is not correct, either logically or historically.
Logically, the question of the Ukrainian genocide has to be decided on its
own merit. Whether Russians and Kazakhs (ethnically the Cossacks were either
Russians or Ukrainians – there was no Cossack nationality) were victims of
genocide has no bearing on Ukrainian genocide, any more than the destruction
of Gypsies and Poles had any influence on the recognition of the genocide of
the Jews. Each case has to be decided on its own merit. Bringing Russians
and Kazakhs into the discussion of Ukrainian genocide is to confuse the
issue. Historically, the Russians’ argument is incorrect for the simple
reason that the famine was not the sums total of the genocidal atrocities
and the Ukrainian peasantry was not the sum total of the Ukrainian victims
of the genocide. The genocide was against the Ukrainians as a
national/ethnic group living within the whole Soviet empire. Montefiore
leaves out not only the 8 million Ukrainians in the RSFSR but also the other
segments of the Ukrianian population (national elites, professional class
etc,) that were also part of the overall target of Stalin’s genocidal
policies. We cannot go into detail here, and I shall make just two short
comments. First, concurrently with the destruction of the village elites in
1929-1930 (“dekulakization”) the regime began the elimination of the
national elites with the roundup of hundreds of intellectuals accused of
organizing a Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (Soiuz Vyzvolennia
Ukrainy). One of their “crimes” was organizing cells in the countryside.
There was no corresonding witch-hunt of Russian elites accused of Russian
nationalism.
 
Second example. Montefiore (mis)quotes Stalin’s letter to Kaganovich (whose
role in Ukraine Montefiore underestimates, in favor of Molotov), “Unless we
begin to straighten out the situation in Ukraine, we may lose Ukraine” and
leaves it dangling because two paragraphs further he insists that “not just
Ukraine was targeted – Molotov … headed to the Urals, … Kaganovich … crushed
the Kuban”. It is what Montefiore leaves out that gives sense to the
Stalin’s reference to Ukraine. “Keep in mind that the Ukrainian Communist
Party (500,000 members, ha-ha) has quite a lot (yes, quite a lot!) of rotten
elements, conscious and unconscious Petliura adherents … As soon as things
get worse, these elements will waste no time opening a front inside (and
outside) the party, against the party.” The sequence to this declaration was
the second series of elimination of Ukrainian elites, this time from the
faithful party cadres, suspected of siding with the Ukrainian peasantry “as
soon as things get worse” (no better indication that Stalin was anticipating
widespread starvation). The national factor always present in Stalin’s
genocidal policies in the 1930s. It behooves the commentators on those years
to present the full picture of events.