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Today, on Holodomor Memorial Day, we commemorate those who died of starvation during the great famine of the 1932-1933. This...

Holodomor: It’s all about justice now Kateryna Dronova Society November 22, 2014 7311 Today, on Holodomor Memorial Day, we commemorate those who died of starvation during the great famine of the 1932-1933. This post describes the treacherous path to the recognition of this grave crime and concludes that Ukraine must demand justice in the name of the dead and the living, and the unborn. The Events of the 1932-1933 Famine The Holodomor, also known as “famine-genocide in Ukraine,” was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. Millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe; the estimates vary from 1.8 to 10 or even 12 million. According to one of them, Ukrainian population losses caused by Holodomor directly constitute 4.6 million people, but the demographic deficit caused by unborn or unrecorded births is estimated as high as 6 million. Rafael Lemkin (the lawyer who invented the term “genocide”) viewed the Holodomor as a pattern of a broader range of Communist tactics aiming at “the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.” He described several typical and systematic prongs of the Soviet campaign attacking fresh outbursts of national spirit, including starvation aimed at the large mass of independent peasants who were repositories of national tradition and the “moving force” of the nationalist movement. Starting from the fall of 1932 Stalin had been sending special commissions to force the Soviet Ukrainian authorities to accept higher delivery quotas of grain procurement (which were unrealistic), and to supervise forced requisitions from starving farmers. Villages that could not fulfill the procurement quotas were placed on “black boards”. All of the stored goods and seeds of the community members were seized; trade and procurement of any goods was forbidden. In total, collective farms in 82 regions of Ukraine were placed on the “boards.” In practice, a village placed on a “black board” saw its peasants starve to death. Recognition of the crime. The Soviet era The issue of accountability for the Holodomor remained taboo for the Communist Party. The first instance when the great famine was mentioned along with the other crimes of Soviet Regime was the release of Khrushchev’s 1956 report on Stalin’s crimes. However, not only the organizers of the Holodomor were not held accountable, the fact of the crime was ignored as such. On February 14, 1988, the International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine was formed under the initiative of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, an independent NGO founded by reputable jurists and legal scholars. The Commission of Inquiry found that the responsibility for the famine lies with the authorities of the Soviet Union. However, this finding failed to aggravate any reaction on the part of the Soviet Union and for decades the famine was concealed. Once the civil attempted to raise the question of impunity for the crime, authorities depicted it as natural disaster and a result of poor harvest. The breakthrough Almost 70 years after the commission of a crime and 13 years after independence declaration the question of the impunity for the famine was brought up again. This might be explained by Ukrainian shift to pro-European position in 2004 as well as by the bias in position of the Council of Europe regarding totalitarian communist regimes from recommendations to dismantle their heritage in 1996, to condemnation of their crimes in Resolution 1481 in 2006. On November 28, 2006, the Law “On the Holodomor in Ukraine of 1932-1933” recognized that the famine was an act of genocide. Two years later in response to the request from the World Congress of Ukrainians, the National Commission for Strengthening Democracy and the Rule of Law approved a Resolution that Holodomor was an act of genocide against Ukrainian people under the definition embodied in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Conclusion states the principal aim is “in assuring the irrevocability of punishment.” In 2009 Central Investigation Department of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) launched a criminal case on the Holodomor in Ukraine in order to legally establish the crime and prosecute those who organized the Famine-Genocide. In its investigation, SBU pursued criminal charges based on the law passed by Parliament in November 2006 that recognized the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people, as well as Article 442 of Ukraine Criminal Code, which outlaws acts of genocide. On January 12, 2010 Kyiv Court of Appeals upheld the conclusions of SBU investigators on the accountability of the leaders of Bolshevik totalitarianism, namely Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Postyshev, Kosior, Chubar and Khatayevych, for the organization and commission of genocide against Ukrainian national group, i.e. creation of artificial life conditions facilitating partial physical destruction of the group. The Court d...

Holodomor: It's all about justice now