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Genocide question
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Date Posted: 27/11/10 2:11:37
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According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the overall number of Ukrainians who died from 1932-1933 famine is estimated as about four to five million out of six to eight million people who died in the Soviet Union as a whole.[1
's message, "One modern calculation that uses demographic data, including that recently available from Soviet archives, narrows the losses to about 3.2 million or, allowing for the lack of precise data, 3 million to 3.5 million.[63][66][67]" on 27/11/10 2:09:50
Genocide question
Main article: Holodomor genocide question
The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.
Robert Conquest believed that the famine of 1932–33 was a deliberate act of mass murder, if not genocide committed as part of Joseph Stalin's collectivization program in the Soviet Union. In 2006, the Security Service of Ukraine declassified more than 5 thousand pages of Holodomor archives.[75] These documents suggest that the Soviet regime singled out Ukraine by not giving it the same humanitarian aid given to regions outside it.[76] In criticism of his work, Mark Tauger claims that Conquest's book on the famine is replete with errors and inconsistencies and that it deserves to be considered an example of Cold War lack of objectivity.[77]
In a published article (1999), Conquest explains:
"I pointed out that Molotov told the Politburo in July 1932 that famine loomed, but that the planned requisitions must proceed regardless (we now have Stalin’s similar instruction from Sochi). And let me cite an even clearer exchange: Mikhail Khataevich, First secretary of the Ukraine Dnipropetrovsk province, wrote to Molotov in November 1932 that the 'minimum' needs of the peasantry must be met, or `there will be no one left to sow and produce’. Molotov answered that this view was 'incorrect, unBolshevik', since 'we cannot put the needs of the State - needs precisely defined in Party resolutions - in the tenth, or even the second, place'. Wheatcroft takes it that Stalin did not 'consciously plan' the famine. 'Plan' is a slippery word: what we are saying is that he consciously inflicted it."[78]
R.W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft have interacted with Conquest and note that he no longer considers the famine "deliberate".[79] Conquest—and, by extension, Davies and Wheatcroft—believe that, had industrialization been abandoned, the famine would have been "prevented" (Conquest), or at least significantly alleviated:
"[W]e regard the policy of rapid industrialization as an underlying cause of the agricultural troubles of the early 1930s, and we do not believe that the Chinese or NEP versions of industrialization were viable in Soviet national and international circumstances."[80]
They see the leadership under Stalin as making significant errors in planning for the industrialization of agriculture.
This retraction by Conquest is also noted by Kulchytsky.[12]
Dr. Michael Ellman of the University of Amsterdam argues that, in addition to deportations, internment in the Gulag and shootings (See: Law of Spikelets), there is some evidence that Stalin used starvation as a weapon in his war against the peasantry.[81] He analyses the actions of the Soviet authorities, two of commission and one of omission: (i) exporting 1.8 million tonnes of grain during the mass starvation (enough to feed more than five million people for one year), (ii) preventing migration from famine afflicted areas (which may have cost an estimated 150,000 lives) and (iii) making no effort to secure grain assistance from abroad (which caused an estimated 1.5 million excess deaths), as well as the attitude of the Stalinist regime in 1932–33 (that many of those starving to death were "counterrevolutionaries", "idlers" or "thieves" who fully deserved their fate). Based on this analysis he concludes, however, that the actions of Stalin's authorities against Ukrainians do not meet the standards of specific intent required to proof genocide as defined by the UN convention (the notable exception is the case of Kuban Ukrainians).[82] Ellman further concluded that if the relaxed definition of genocide is used, the actions of Stalin's authorities do fit the definition of genocide.[82] However, this more relaxed definition of genocide makes the latter the common historical event, according to Ellman.[82]
Regarding the aforementioned actions taken by Stalin in the early 1930s, Ellman unambiguously states that, from the standpoint of contemporary international criminal law, Stalin is "clearly guilty" of "a series of crimes against humanity" and that, from the standpoint of national criminal law, the only way to defend Stalin from a charge of mass murder is "to argue he was ignorant of the consequences of his actions." He also rebukes Davies and Wheatcroft for, among other things, their "very narrow understanding" of intent. He states:
"According to them, only taking an action whose sole objective is to cause deaths among the peasantry counts as intent. Taking an action with some other goal (e.g. exporting grain to import machinery) but which the actor certainly knows will also cause peasants to starve does not count as intentionally starving the peasants. However, this is an interpretation of ‘intent’ which flies in the face of the general legal interpretation."[82]
Genocide scholar Adam Jones stresses that, while controversial, some of the actions of the Soviet leadership during 1931-32 should be considered genocidal. Not only did the famine kill millions, it took place against "a backdrop of persecution, mass execution, and incarceration clearly aimed at undermining Ukrainians as a national group."[83]
Some historians maintain that the famine was an unintentional consequence of collectivization, and that the associated resistance to it by the Ukrainian peasantry exacerbated an already-poor harvest.[84][85] Some researchers state that while the term Ukrainian Genocide is often used in application to the event, technically, the use of the term "genocide" is inapplicable.[11]
The statistical distribution of famine's victims among the ethnicities closely reflects the ethnic distribution of the rural population of Ukraine[86] Moldavian, Polish, German and Bulgarian population that mostly resided in the rural communities of Ukraine suffered in the same proportion as the rural Ukrainian population.[86] While ethnic Russians in Ukraine lived mostly in urban areas and the cities were affected little by the famine, the rural Russian population was affected the same way as the rural population of any other ethnicity.[86]
West Virginia University professor Dr Mark Tauger claims that any analysis that asserts that the harvests of 1931 and 1932 were not extraordinarily low and that the famine was a political measure intentionally imposed through excessive procurements is based on an insufficient source base and an uncritical approach to the official sources.[84] Other scholars, such as Dr. David Marples, professor of history at the University of Alberta, have been critical of Tauger's claims.[87] Wheatcroft states Tauger's view represents the opposite extreme in arguing the famine was totally accidental.[88]
Author James Mace was one of the first to claim that the famine constituted genocide. But British economist Stephen Wheatcroft, who studied the famine, believed that Mace's work debased the field of Russian studies.[89] However, Wheatcroft's characterization of the famine deaths as largely excusable, negligent homicide has been challenged by economist Steven Rosefielde, who states:
"Grain supplies were sufficient enough to sustain everyone if properly distributed. People died mostly from terror-starvation (excess grain exports, seizure of edibles from the starving, state refusal to provide emergency relief, bans on outmigration, and forced deportation to food-deficit locales), not poor harvests and routine administrative bungling."[90]
In his 1953 speech the "father of the [UN] Genocide Convention," Dr Raphael Lemkin described "the destruction of the Ukrainian nation" as the "classic example of genocide," for "...the Ukrainian is not and never has been a Russian. His culture, his temperament, his language, his religion, are all different...to eliminate (Ukrainian) nationalism...the Ukrainian peasantry was sacrificed...a famine was necessary for the Soviet and so they got one to order...if the Soviet program succeeds completely, if the intelligentsia, the priest, and the peasant can be eliminated [then] Ukraine will be as dead as if every Ukrainian were killed, for it will have lost that part of it which has kept and developed its culture, its beliefs, its common ideas, which have guided it and given it a soul, which, in short, made it a nation...This is not simply a case of mass murder. It is a case of genocide, of the destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation."[91][92]
...the evidence of a large-scale famine was so overwhelming, was so unanimously confirmed by the peasants that the most "hard-boiled" local officials could say nothing in denial.
(William Henry Chamberlin, Christian Science Monitor, May 29, 1934) [93]
Mr.Chamberlin was a Moscow correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor for 10 years. In 1934 he was reassigned to the Far East. After he left the Soviet Union he wrote his account of the situation in Ukraine and North Caucasus (Poltava, Bila Tserkva, and Kropotkin). Chamberlin later published couple of books "Russia's Iron Age" and "The Ukraine: A Submerged Nation".[94][95]
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