Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Soviet Power
Thus handed to the Soviets, Ukraine was at the founding of the USSR in 1922. Behind
Russia, it was the second largest and second most powerful republic in the union, but
despite - or perhaps because of - that 'little brother' status, it came in for some particu-
larly harsh bullying from the top. When Stalin took power in 1927, he looked upon
Ukraine as a laboratory for testing Soviet restructuring while stamping out 'harmful' na-
tionalism. In 1932-33 he oversaw a famine. Executions and deportations of intellectuals
and political 'dissidents' followed, along with the destruction of numerous Ukrainian
palaces, churches and cemeteries. During the great purges of 1937-39, an estimated one
million people in the USSR were executed and a further three to 12 million (the numbers
are difficult to quantify) sent to labour camps, a high proportion of them from Ukraine.
EUROPE'S HIDDEN FAMINE
Between 1932 and 1933, some three to five million citizens of Ukraine - 'Europe's
breadbasket' - died of starvation while surrounded by fields of wheat and locked
government storehouses full of food. How did this happen? Stalin collectivised
Soviet farms and ordered the production of unrealistic quotas of grain, which was
then confiscated.
Many historians believe this famine was part of the Soviet leadership's wider
plan to solve the 'nationality problem' within several troublesome republics, espe-
cially Ukraine. Undoubtedly the agricultural collectivisation of the time was ideolo-
gically driven. However, as the USSR's leading farmlands, Ukraine was particularly
hard hit, and documents released in 2006 suggest that Ukrainians were deliber-
ately targeted in the 'Great Hunger'. For example, Ukraine's borders were re-
portedly shut to prevent people leaving.
A total of seven to 10 million people died throughout the USSR. (It's difficult to
quantify, partly because those who took the next census were, in Stalin's inimitable
style, immediately ordered shot.) Yet the true scale of the disaster has rarely been
appreciated in the West.
As Soviet collectivisation began in the 1930s, combining individual farms into
huge state-run communes, wealthier peasants ( kulaks,or kurkuliin Ukrainian)
who resisted were deported or starved into submission. By 1932 Communist Party
activists were seizing grain and produce from collectives and houses. Watchtowers
were erected above fields. Anyone caught stealing was executed or deported. As
entire villages starved, people committed suicide and even resorted to cannibal-
ism.
At the time Soviet authorities denied the famine's existence, but damning facts
have emerged since Ukrainian independence. In 2003 Kyiv designated the Holodo-
mor (Ukrainian famine) as genocide, and a handful of other governments followed
