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Holodomor History

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Holodomor History
Holodomor History Holodomor is а genocide of the Ukrainian nation committed in 1932–1933. The leadership of the Soviet Union committed it in order to suppress Ukrainians and ultimately eliminate Ukrainian resistance to the regime, including efforts to build an independent Ukrainian state. In 2006, by the Law of Ukraine “On the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine”, the Holodomor was recognised as genocide of the Ukrainian nation. In 2010, the resolution of the Court of Appeal in Kyiv region proved the genocidal nature of the Holodomor and the intention of Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Postyshev, Chubar, Khatayevych, and Kosior to destroy a part of the Ukrainian nation. While committing the particularly grave crime of genocide in 1932–1933, the communist totalitarian regime destroyed millions. After dividing the territory of Ukraine between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Moscow Kingdom in the middle of the 17th century, the Ukrainian nation did not have its statehood for the next two centuries. That is why it faced oppression on political, economic, national, and cultural frontlines. Russia carried out a harsh colonisation of Left-Bank Ukraine. Powerful Russification, chauvinism, and the policy of identifying Ukrainians with the Russian people (identification of Ukraine as part of Russia — Little Russia) did not destroy the Ukrainian national consciousness. Ukrainians very keenly felt their difference from the Russians and, for centuries, waged a permanent liberation struggle. It was only in 1918 that they succeeded in establishing the Ukrainian State—the Ukrainian People’s Republic—and in uniting Ukrainian territories. At the beginning of the 20th century, the independent Ukrainian State lasted only a few years, struggling with constant encroachments and interference in the country’s internal affairs from outside. It never managed to constructively lay and strengthen the foundation of its independence in the world. After the third occupation of the Ukrainian lands that were part of the Russian Empire, the Russian Bolsheviks established a communist totalitarian regime by force and puppet governments. On July 6, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established, which included the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Union treaty called for full equality of republics, but the Kremlin actually controlled Ukraine. Despite the short periods of state formation, the Ukrainian state tradition still existed and had deep historical roots, dating back to the period of Kyivan Rus. It united the nation, strengthened Ukrainian nationalism and contradicted Lenin’s theory of socialism, which envisaged the fusion of nations. Having occupied the territory of Ukraine, the Russian Bolsheviks felt this very acutely. Lenin defined the national movement and the problems of national sovereignty as a phenomenon of a bourgeois nature, with which the Bolsheviks fought. The Ukrainian essence was an obstacle to the existence of the USSR in the format determined by the Soviet leadership. With the establishment of the communist regime, noticeable changes occurred in the social, socio-political and socio-economic life of Ukraine, which primarily affected the traditional village. The communist totalitarian regime imposed new customs and new rituals on Ukrainians while at the same time forcing them to renounce the past and forget their origins. Ukrainisation was curtailed. An attack on the spiritual life of Ukrainians began. In 1928, the Soviet leadership announced a collectivisation policy, the unification of individual private peasant farms into state-owned collective farms. Each farmer was assigned a certain number of trudodni (workdays), for which they were paid in kind. However, mainly, the totality of workdays was so miserable that denied any opportunity for the farmers to feed themselves and their families. Considering Ukrainian farmers’ strong sense of individualism, the implementation of the collective farm policy system in Ukraine faced resistance. Therefore, farmers were forcefully herded into collective farms by compulsion, terror and propaganda war with dissenters, whom the regime marked as “kulaks,” “bourgeois nationalists,” and “counter-revolutionaries,” and destroyed those people. The policy of the Soviet regime provoked the Ukrainian people’s resistance. Historians have recorded about 4 thousand farmers’ mass demonstrations in the early 1930s against collectivisation, tax policy, robbery, terror and violence done by authorities. The sense of national identity of the Ukrainian farmers, together with their mental individualism, contradicted the ideology of the Soviet Union. It was the basis of Ukrainian nationalism and posed a threat to the unity and very existence of the USSR. That is why the object of the genocide crime was the Ukrainian nation. Consequently, the Stalinist totalitarian regime exterminated the Ukrainian peasantry by genocide as a specific part of the nation and the source of its spiritual...