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(#10) Every November, Ukrainians Observe Holodomor Remembrance Day
Every fourth Saturday of November since 1998, Ukrainians observe Holodomor Remembrance Day in remembrance of the victims of the genocide. Flags fly at half-staff, and the media is limited in airing entertaining programs.
Holodomor Remembrance Day has also been observed around the world. Canada had an entire Holodomor Remembrance Week in 2008. In 2009, US President Barack Obama released a statement regarding Holodomor Remembrance Day:
"...[R]emembering the victims of the man-made catastrophe of Holodomor provides us an opportunity to reflect upon the plight of all those who have suffered the consequences of extremism and tyranny around the world.”
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(#1) Soviet Authorities Forcibly Removed Food From The Kulaks, Ukrainian Farmers
The Kulaks, which literally translates to “fists” in Russian, were successful farmers who resisted Stalin’s collectivization policies, which they considered to be a return to serfdom. The Soviet authorities branded them as enemies of the working class, and set out to destroy them. "Now we have the opportunity to carry out a resolute offensive against the kulaks, break their resistance, eliminate them as a class and replace their production with the production of kolkhozes and sovkhozes,” Stalin said. Kolkhozes and sovkhozes were the collective communist government farms.
By the 1930s, Stalin implemented his dekulakization policy, where Soviet authorities forcibly took land and food away from the farmers, and sent many of them off to Siberia. The rest were left to die of starvation.
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(#6) Estimates Of The Holodomor Death Toll Range As High As 20 Million
How many people actually died in the Holodomor? Even today, it remains a contested question. Historian Timothy Snyder believes that about 3.3 million people died. In a statement from the Director General of the National Museum Memorial of Victims of the Holodomor, he claimed that historians agreed approximately seven million died within the Ukrainian border, and three million outside the border. Horrifyingly, past figures have estimated the total death toll upwards of around 20.6 million.
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(#3) Many Starving People Turned To Cannibalism
During the famine, many Ukrainians turned to cannibalism out of desperation; starvation drove people to lose their humanity and turn on each other. It was all too common for parents to forsake their children and eat them, only to later die of starvation themselves, wrote Yale Historian Timothy Snyder in his book, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.
Human flesh even became a commodity on the black market. Despite the desperate times, cannibalism was still punishable by law. Some 2,505 people were arrested and charged with cannibalism during the Holodomor.
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(#11) The History Of Russia And Ukraine Is Complex And Brutal
Located "at the crossroads of Central Asia, Russia, Europe and the Black Sea," the area encompassing Ukraine, Russia, and Crimea has always been complex and faced myriad challenges as it attempts to reconcile autonomy with democracy and efficiency.
Although many factions of people spanning these borders share various traits, as well as a common culture and history, there has been a harsh history of conflict as each region struggles to maintain its own nationality. Ukraine has long wanted its own autonomy apart from Russia, which Russia has never supported. Russia frequently attempts to invade or annex various parts of its regional family, and in neighboring Crimea, which is part of Ukraine, the Russian Federation forcibly took control of the republic in 2014.
The Annexation of Crimea sparked conflict between Ukraine and Russia, which devolved into warfare between the two states. Corrupt elections oversaw Russian puppets installed in Ukrainian higher office in order to create trade deals, and innocent civilians have lost their lives. A brief ceasefire in 2015 was quickly violated. Hopefully, one day the animosity at the root of the Holodomor will be peacefully resolved.
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(#8) There Has Been A Lot Of Denial Of The Holodomor
After the end of the Holdomor in 1933, the Soviet government tried to suppress evidence of the state-caused famine. Stalin even banned the publication of census data. The Kremlin has never acknowledged the genocide. They rejected the label, claiming it was a “nationalistic interpretation.” Even former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, claimed it was “incorrect and unjust” to call Holodomor “the genocide of a certain people.”
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In the late 1920s, the Soviet Union began industrialization and agricultural collectivization. In 1931, Soviet agriculture experienced a reduction in grain production, and rural labor productivity also dropped significantly. Soon, the famine appeared in 44 districts of Ukraine. As the most important grain-producing region in the Soviet Union, Ukraine suffered the most from this famine and lost about a quarter of its residents.
For most of the history of the Soviet era, the true circumstances of this famine have been carefully covered up. The random tool explained 11 facts about Holodomor that was a man-made Soviet Famine. Many papers claimed that the famine was a planned genocide action by the top Soviet leaders, with the aim of eliminating the Ukrainians.
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