Of the historic responsibility of the Soviet government for the Genocide Famine of 1932 -1933 there can be no reasonable doubt. In contrast to its
policy in 1921-1922, it stifled any appeal far foreign aid by denying the very fact of the Genocide Famine and by refusing to foreign journalists the
right to travel in the Genocide Famine regions until it was all aver. The Genocide Famine was quite deliberately employed as an instrument of
national policy, as the last means of breaking the resistance of the peasantry to the new system where they are divorced from personal ownership
of the land and obliged to work under conditions which the state may dictate to them and deliver up whatever that state may demand of them.
"The collective farmers this year have passed through a good school. For some this school was quite ruthless." In this cryptic
understatement President Kalinin summed up the situation in Ukraine and the North Caucasus, from the Soviet stand paint. The unnumbered new
graves in the richest Soviet agricultural regions mark the passing of those who did not survive the ordeal, who were victims of this "ruthless
school."
The Soviet government could easily have averted the Genocide Famine from its own resources if it had desired to do so. A complete cessation
of the export of foodstuffs in 1932 or the diversion of a small amount of foreign currency to the purchase of grain and provisions would have
achieved this end. The Soviet attitude was pretty adequately summed up by Mr. Mezhuev, President of the Poltava Soviet, who said to me: "To
have imparted grain would have been injurious to our prestige. To have let the peasants keep their grain would have encouraged
them to go on producing little."
(16)William H. Chamberlin. Russia's Iron Aqe (London, 1935) p. 89. The author, a journalist, was originally pro-Soviet. He was one of the few Westerners who personally toured Ukraine
during the Famine.
policy in 1921-1922, it stifled any appeal far foreign aid by denying the very fact of the Genocide Famine and by refusing to foreign journalists the
right to travel in the Genocide Famine regions until it was all aver. The Genocide Famine was quite deliberately employed as an instrument of
national policy, as the last means of breaking the resistance of the peasantry to the new system where they are divorced from personal ownership
of the land and obliged to work under conditions which the state may dictate to them and deliver up whatever that state may demand of them.
"The collective farmers this year have passed through a good school. For some this school was quite ruthless." In this cryptic
understatement President Kalinin summed up the situation in Ukraine and the North Caucasus, from the Soviet stand paint. The unnumbered new
graves in the richest Soviet agricultural regions mark the passing of those who did not survive the ordeal, who were victims of this "ruthless
school."
The Soviet government could easily have averted the Genocide Famine from its own resources if it had desired to do so. A complete cessation
of the export of foodstuffs in 1932 or the diversion of a small amount of foreign currency to the purchase of grain and provisions would have
achieved this end. The Soviet attitude was pretty adequately summed up by Mr. Mezhuev, President of the Poltava Soviet, who said to me: "To
have imparted grain would have been injurious to our prestige. To have let the peasants keep their grain would have encouraged
them to go on producing little."
(16)William H. Chamberlin. Russia's Iron Aqe (London, 1935) p. 89. The author, a journalist, was originally pro-Soviet. He was one of the few Westerners who personally toured Ukraine
during the Famine.
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| 1932-1933: THE GENOCIDE FAMINE IN UKRAINE A Teacher's Curriculum Guide THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT WAS TO BLAME William H. Chamberlin(16) |
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