Ukraine Marks Holodomor Anniversary, U.S. Blasts Russia's 'Ongoing Aggression'

Ukraine is marking the 85th anniversary of the Stalin-era famine, known as the Holodomor, in which millions of people died of starvation. The Holodomor took place in 1932 and 1933 as Soviet authorities forced peasants in Ukraine to join collective farms by requisitioning their grain and other food products.

In a statement released on November 23, the U.S. State Department said the victims were "deliberately starved to death by the regime of Josef Stalin."

Moscow denies any systematic effort to target Ukrainians, arguing a "poor harvest" at the time wiped out many in other parts of the Soviet Union.

The department also pointed to Russia's "ongoing aggression" in eastern Ukraine, where fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Moscow-backed separatists has left more than 10,300 dead since April 2014.

"The Soviet Union's barbaric seizure of Ukrainian land and crops was undertaken with the deliberate political goal of subjugating the Ukrainian people and nation."

"Today Ukrainians are once again dying as a result of Russia's attempts to destroy the identity and Western aspirations of the people of Ukraine," the statement added, citing Moscow's "ongoing aggression in eastern Ukraine."

However, Russia "will not vanquish the resilient Ukrainian spirit, nor dampen Ukrainians' desire for a better future," the State Department added, reaffirming the United States' "unwavering support" for Ukraine's national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the famine as a "major humanitarian catastrophe" that also affected Russians, Kazakhs, and others.

"Attempts to present those tragic events exclusively as an act of 'genocide of the Ukrainian people' have nothing in common either with the restoration of justice or historical facts," the ministry said.

arguing a “poor harvest” at the time wiped out many in other parts of the Soviet Union. ............................. Lets not forget the Kaytn massacre, “It was a cold summer, that’s why they had winter clothes. (trying to blame the German Army who found them.)” “No famine in the Ukraine, they weren’t starving, they were just hungry” to quote the NYT’s #1 reporter Mr Duranty. (Same ole NYT, no change.) Its amazing how well the Soviet Government covered all their crimes, I think many here are familiar with their mode of operation and apply it to our politics.

The Clinton Era of American History commenced circa 1978.

It’s now 2018 or 40 fn years later. Ask yourself if your trust in Uncle Sam has increased or decreased during that timeframe.

So, when our State Department says Stalin “intentionally” starved millions of his own people, what’s your first reaction? Do you believe Stalin or do you believe our State Department?

Arguably, our State Department has lied to us more than Stalin.

That’s my SAD point!

Sadly, the US government has a sorry history of lying to its subjects, and none of its lies were quite so brazen as those told about Stalin in the thirties and forties.

For example, Owen Lattimore, director of the US Office of Wartime Information, visited Stalin’s slave labor camp in Kolyma with Vice President Henry Wallace in 1944. In his National Geographic travelogue, Lattimore gushed about the gulag’s conditions, praising it as a combination of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Tennessee Valley Authority, remarking on how strong and well-fed the inmates were, and ascribing to camp commandant Ivan Nikishov “a trained and sensitive interest in art and music and also a deep sense of civic responsibility”. Solzhenitsyn documented an entirely different account of Kolyma in Gulag Archipelago. McCarthy accused Lattimore of being a communist or communist sympathizer, because he actually was one or the other. As it turns out because of repeated portrayals in media and entertainment, McCarthy is political villain in the popular mind and the likes of Lattimore are victims of McCarthyism.

Others have referenced Stalin’s mass murders of Polish officers in Katyn. Roosevelt’s government covered that up, too.

NYT has also been printing fake news for a very long time: the NYT saw it fit to print John Reed’s stories about how wonderful, glorious, and popular the Bolshevik Revolution was. Later on, during the Holomodor, the NYT saw fit to print the reports of Pulitzer-prize-winning foreign correspondent Walter Duranty that “any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda” because “there is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation”.

Despite Donald Trump’s peculiar relationship with the truth, I see no reason to doubt anything he says any more than I doubted previous presidents. Which is to say, I think it appropriate to be skeptical of everything he says just like I’m skeptical of everything the government says and everything in the media.

There’s no reason to think that the US government or the mainstream media is less reliable now than in 1978, or 1968, or 1938. As some wag said, “If you don’t read the papers, you’re uninformed; if you do read the papers, you’re misinformed.” That line old enough to have been misattributed to Mark Twain in 1927.

I can understand why the Ukraine government is angling to tie the Holodomor to the Russian Government. Nations in conflict take every opportunity to besmirch each other.

However, it is intellectually dishonest to do so.

The Holodomor was not a genocide of ethnic Ukrainians directed by ethnic Russians. It had nothing at all to do with ethnicity. The Holodomor was the consequence of communism: Lenin and Stalin wanted rapid industrialization in the cities and the kolkohz communal farm system in rural areas. Successful kulaks were not keen to have their lands, herds, and farm equipment collectivized. So, Stalin killed all the successful kulaks so they couldn’t put up resistance. The remaining farmers were those who figured they would benefit from collectivization; in other words, peasants who were at best mediocre, but overwhelmingly lazy and/or stupid. But, when they couldn’t manage to harvest crops like the eradicated kulaks had done before, they didn’t have enough food to send to the cities. So Stalin had to seize their food to support his industrialization plans.

The Holodomor did not just involve the Ukraine; all USSR peasants were affected in much the same way.

It is intellectually dishonest for the US to tie the Holodomor to the current row between Russia and Ukraine. It would be productive to commemorate the Holodomor by portraying it a completely predictable consequence of Marxism.

well written and informative comments that are much appreciated!

I do think though that our government over the last 40 years and particularly the Clinton/Obama years has gone way off the road into the swamp with it’s clearly criminal activities in support of the Clintons and Obama. Indeed. much more so than the thirties or any other timeframe.

I further see this coalition between the Corporate Media and the Democratic Party as more of a threat to America than Russia or China. Calling them “the enemy of the people” is an understatement, if anything.

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