Non-Soviet Scholarship on the Ukrainian Famine

stop it They concentrated only on crimes involving the interests and property of the state. In desperation to get gold or silver to exchange for food at the torgsins (hard currency stores), grave robbing, especially involving the resting places of prominent citizens of the past who were likely to have been buried with jewelry, assumed a massive scale. Cases where activists beat “pilfering” peasants to death went unpunished. Thieves of farm animals were lynched. 51 Also given were figures on mortality (about 20%) in the district. Documents hitherto published in The Black Deeds were now rendered in the original language. 52

Dmytro Solovey pointed out in the Institute’s Ukrainian Review in 1955 that famine broke out on a smaller scale in Ukraine in the 1931-1932 agricultural year, a crucial fact to be kept in mind when we later consider that at this time food difficulties were acknowledged by Moscow only in the Transvolga. 53 He later used the Munich journal to summarize and supplement his findings further, estimating that 4.8 million persons perished in the Famine in Ukraine. He also reiterated bis earlier argument that the Famine was planned beforehand. 54

The first real scholarly history of the Ukrainian SSR in English was published by Basil Dmytryshyn in 1956. Dmytryshyn’s work was based primarily upon a close reading of the Soviet Ukrainian press, especially the daily organ of the Soviet government, Visti VUTsVK (News of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee of Soviets). This enabled Dmytryshyn to cite chapter and verse concerning policy pronouncements. He was therefore on solid ground when he argued that during

the First Five Year Plan, the Ukraine, as one of the fundamental keys in the complexity of all these (i.e., the plan’s—JM) experiments, became the subject of utmost political and administrative attention. Any sign of improper functioning of this elaborate mechanism was immediately interpreted as sabotage, as a sign of counterrevolutionary moves; as a sign of an attempt to separate the Ukraine from the rest of the USSR; and as a sign of foreign conspiracy against the “citadel of the proletariat” The defense of the USSR and of the Ukraine in particular became the everyday slogan, and toward that end the entire apparatus of the Comintern was organized. The Ukraine, in a word, became the region sine qua non. When, therefore, in this atmosphere of self-created fear and anxiety, a partial breakdown in agriculture occurred, a considerable number of the Ukrainian peasantry was exterminated, both as a class and as a national enemy. This was done in the most ruthless fashion of recorded history—by an intentionally created famine.
The most heinous feature of the 1932-3 famine in the Ukraine was the fact that it was politically inspired, and that it had the full blessing of the top leadership of the Party and of the Government of the USSR. That this cold-blooded massacre was deliberately engineered can be seen from the fact that every measure taken by the Government of the USSR during this period was intended to increase, rather than to alleviate the difficulties of the population. Thus, for example, the government, to finance industrialization and to feed the growing city

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51 Pavlo Lutarevych, Tsyfry i fakty pro holod v Ukraini (roky 1932-1933)” (Figures and Facts
About the Famine in Ukraine: 1932-1933), Ukrains’kyi zbimyk Book 2, pp. 82-83.

52 Ibid., pp. 92-93,96-98.

53 Dmytro Solovey, “Ukrains’ke selo v rokakh 1931-1933″ (The Ukrainian Village in 1931-1933),
Ukrains’kyi zbimyk, Book 2,1955, pp. 64-66.

54 Idem., “Holod u systemi koloniial’noho panuvannia TsK KPSS v Ukraini (Do 40-litn’oho iubileiu
KP(b)U i 25-oi richnytsi holodu 1932-1933 rr. v Ukraini)” (Famine in the System of the CPSU Central
Committee’s Colonial Rule in Ukraine: on the Fortieth Anniversary of the CP(b)U and Twenty-Fifth
Anniversary of the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine),” Ukrains’kyi zbimyk, Book 15,1958, pp. 3-61.