Concept in Definition ABC

In Ukrainian the word holodomor means death by hunger. However, this term is used to refer to a specific moment in the history of Ukraine, the period 1932-1933. During this stage the Ukrainian people faced a devastating situation: a poor grain harvest and a brutal repression led by Soviet leader Lósif Stalin.

Historic context

At the beginning of the 1930s, Ukraine was already part of the Soviet Union, but it had a certain economic autonomy. By then the Ukrainian people enjoyed economic prosperity and in this sense Ukraine was known as the bread basket of Europe, since the grain of its crops was exported throughout the world. continent. From a political and cultural point of view, the Ukrainians claimed greater autonomy from the central power in Moscow and there was a weather social of cultural exaltation.

The communist reaction

Stalin considered that Ukrainian prosperity could represent a danger for the unity of the Soviet Union and for the communist project. For this reason, he launched a strategy to weaken Ukraine. This strategy had several axes:

1) impose the collectivization of the lands of culture and abolish the system of production of the Ukrainian peasantry,

2) persecute and repress all those who opposed collectivization (if someone opposed the measures imposed was considered an enemy of the people and for this reason he was sent to a concentration camp or gulag),

3) confiscate the grain from the peasants and

4) isolate the population through army control so that they could not access any source of food.

The result of all this was devastating: millions of Ukrainians died of hunger and during the harsh Soviet repression there were episodes of authentic terror (entire families dying from lack of food, assassinations, looting, cases of cannibalism, burned peasants alive ...).

Consequences of the genocide

Historians consider that the Ukrainian holodomor or genocide is comparable to the holocaust suffered by the Jews in World War II

With regard to the death toll, there are several versions (a minimum of 3 million and a maximum of 15). In any case, on the fourth Saturday of November in Ukraine millions of candles are lit to honor the victims of the Holodomor.

Ukrainian society tries to keep alive the memory of the Holodomor of 1932-33, since during the communist period the official estates prevented the truth about the genocide from being known Ukrainian.

Some Russian historians reject the official version of the Ukrainians and claim that the famine period did not affect exclusively to Ukraine but also took place in other territories of the Soviet Union (for example, in Uzbekistan). On the other hand, the government Russian has not yet recognized the Ukrainian genocide.

Photos: Fotolia - Fmua / allika_ps

Holodomor themes