Holodomor: Starving to death

It was a policy that aimed to change the economic power and landscape of the Soviet Union. A policy introduced to reorder the inequality that had governed the Russian Empire for hundreds of years. Yet, it was a policy devised to manipulate power and ultimately led to the death of millions by starvation. Called by one commentator as "the crime of the century that nobody's ever heard of" the Holodomor, a Ukrainian word meaning ‘death by hunger’ was a famine ruthlessly designed by Joseph Stalin to crush and strike and fear to an entire population. Massacred by Stalin’s secret police and abetted by left-wing Western intellects, the full scale of the atrocities are still unknown and still unrecognised as a crime of genocide. It is an event where the truth was killed.

Trusted and regarded by Lenin, many of the Bolsheviks regarded the Stalin as nothing more than a party administrator. However, after Lenin’s death in 1924, all the potential successors: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin all underestimated him. Stalin’s tact and astuteness allowed him to pick off his political rivals one by one and saw him rise to become party leader. Stalin was someone who demanded obedience. Influenced by the works of as Friedrich Nietzsche and Niccolo Machiavelli, he was willing to manipulate the weak to stay in power. He knew several cruel acts would serve a purpose in avoiding weak rule. To him, the ends always justified the means, no matter how malign. How tens of millions would eventually pay with their lives.

Stalin’s economic plans included transforming the Russian economy into an industrial superpower; one of the policies included the collectivisation of farms. Its main concern was regaining the land that many peasants had gained during the early years of revolution. Stalin needed the grain to feed new industry and to export to achieve foreign capital. It was a policy devised to improve farming yields by introducing the use of modern machinery. Yet it was a political move also. The peasants (Kulaks), though far from wealthy, had gained from the land reforms; but were regarded as traitors to the Communist cause. Many of them lived in the Ukraine, a bread basket for the whole country. Stalin saw the collectivisation in Ukraine as a way bludgeoning attempts to reaffirm independence. It demonstrated his ability to be strong. The so-called ‘dekulakisation’ was his attempts to end class warfare in the USSR.

To feed the growing workforce, Stalin demanded that yields improve. All produce was confiscated by party officials. Anyone who dared to hoard or steal grain would be executed or deported to Gulags in Siberia or Kazakhstan. Stalin’s terror demonstrated to ordinary citizens what would happen if they did not change their ways. When demand increased, the Ukrainian farmers were left without food. Their hopes of an invading force from Poland or Germany evaporated with the signing of non-aggression pacts. Travel was forbidden and slowly the population began to wilt.

Parents gave away their children in hope of a future; some because they could not feed them. Others dug their own graves, to await their peace. In the spring of 1933, 10,000 people were dying every day.

Some Communities resorted to cannibalism. In fact, human meat developed into a market. One mother when asked why she had killed and then eaten half of her child said ‘they would die anyway’.

It is thought that Ukraine lost around a quarter of its population, mainly women and children.

Yet this was all a lie according to Soviet officials, their line was explicit: ‘There was no famine’. It was not just Soviet officials, Western sympathisers and admirers of Communism came to see the country for themselves. They marvelled at Stalin’s ‘Five Year Plan’ and endorsed the progress he had brought. Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, Doris Lessing all extolled the virtues of the Soviet system. Lenin coined the phrase for such people as ‘useful idiots’: Those who believed that political violence was necessary in the name of progress. British journalist Walter Duranty (the only Western journalist to interview Stalin) said that of the situation in Ukraine was malnutrition not famine. Foreign diplomats were given 'tours' of neighbourhoods to illustrate the Soviet project.

The two Western journalists who did report the truth, Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones, both had to dodge the secret police to investigate the reports themselves. Yet, when they published their work, the likes of Duranty lampooned and denied their results. Duranty went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and Jones was murdered mysteriously in China several years later (believed to be by Stalin’s secret police).

To this day, eighty years on, the truth is still hidden in the police archives. It is also hidden to the Russian public. A BBC report highlighted that Russian history books distort large chunks of their own history. Stalin, who was voted the third greatest Russian of all time, was the war leader and great manager, he was not a tyrant. It hides the fact that Stalin lied about his date of birth and his height. They do not know that Stalin’s face was scarred by smallpox or his hand remained withered after an accident as a young boy. Nor do they learn of the massacre inflicted on 20,000 Polish officers in the forests of Katyn or his Great Purge that would eventually kill millions more. Stalin did not observe things in a moral sense of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, he was more interested in what was a good for him. Evil never crossed his mind. Any of his associates he distrusted were tortured then murdered. Even at his death, his guards refused to disturb him for days in case they felt his wrath.

History may redeem the plight of the Ukrainian nation, which included Poles, Germans and Jews. But we will never know how many.

The Cossacks: To Russia with love?

There is something warm about watching the reaction of soldiers returning from war. The lucid smiles and cries of happiness when families reunite after months of absence and separation. It is not cold turkey, besides the post, there is the internet to keep them updated with news from back home. It was not the same for the men of World War Two. The policy of enlistment meant that men could be called away for years and often leave was something of a dream, especially at the front. Those men interned in Prisoner of War (PoW) camps fared worse, despite the depictions of Hollywood, successful escapes rarely occurred and incarceration for some men lasted the whole duration of the war. The only lifeline was from mail back home to keep their morale high and mind occupied.

Towards the end of the war, when the future of the world was being decided, the Allies signed agreements that all liberated soldiers of PoW camps would be returned to their native armies and homeward bound. This  was a relief for men longing for ‘Blighty’ as they were returning to a Britain forged with the new welfare state. The Soviets believed they would return to the Mother Russia as heroes and be repaid after much bloodshed. How they were wrong.

Around two million men and women were sent back to Russia by the British and Americans. They were coaxed with propaganda like ‘The Motherland has forgiven you! The Motherland calls you!’ Many had fought to the brink and seen their comrades die surrounding them. Many had been forced to work under German supervision (The Germans of course saw the Bolsheviks/Slavs as a sub-race). However, Stalin saw this as treachery, surrendering or corroborating with the sworn enemy as a crime. To many, these Russians had been forsaken three times: being ill-equipped to fight initially, receiving no support once captured and then finally the contempt of arriving home and accused of being a traitor. Much is depicted of German soldiers being sent to the notorious Gulags, but many Russians faced a death sentence in the Siberian tundra.

As one prisoner put it:

“For not wanting to die from a German bullet, the prisoner had to die from a Soviet bullet for having been a prisoner of war! Some get theirs from the enemy; we get ours from our own! ... In general, this war revealed to us that the worse thing to be was to be a Russian.”

One aspect that is lamentable from a British aspect was the fate of the Cossacks. They had actively fought against Stalin and supported the Nazis throughout the war. Towards the end of the conflict, Cossack units surrendered to the British hoping for leniency, but this was not to happen. As part of the Allied agreement, the British sent back around 23,000 Cossack men, women and children to a bleak and hopeless future. Upon learning their fate many Cossack soldiers committed suicide and further resistance was restrained by force. The inevitable doom had arisen.

Russia’s legacy of World War 2 paints the brave mass of men and women, who fought and snared the beast of Nazism. It was bloody and probably the most nihilistic war we have ever seen. Figures estimate that 23 to 27 million Soviets died in their attempt to liberate the Motherland. The famous matchsticks that divided the continent for another 40 years, shackled another generation and killed the hope and efforts of the many millions who had fought for liberation.