So... what do you do if your Gov decides to starve you? IIRC the politician mentioned toward the end is no longer in power? Eighty years ago, millions of Ukrainians died in a famine that many label a genocide by the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin. As Ukraine prepares to embark on its annual memorial events, the BBC's David Stern finds that memories of the massacre are undimmed for many. Nina Karpenko, an energetic 87-year-old, demonstrates what it took to survive Ukraine's Stalin-era famine, known as the Holodomor, or "death by hunger". Some cheap cornmeal, wheat chaff, dried nettle leaves and other weeds - this was the essence of life during the horrific winter and early spring of 1932-33 in Ukraine. As Ms Karpenko tells her story, she kneads the ingredients into a dull green mass, adding water and a little salt, which she then fashions into a patty. She calls it bread, though it barely fits this description. Then she spreads wax shavings on a pan to keep the patty from sticking and burning, and places it in an oven. Ms Karpenko's father died early on. His legs swelled up and he expired when trying to consume a small amount of food - a common occurrence among those close to starvation. Weed loaf Nina Karpenko's family were forced to improvise to survive She made bread from cornmeal, wheat chaff, dried nettle leaves and other weeds Villagers used wax because there was no cooking oil Her mother walked 15km (nine miles) to a nearby town to see if she could obtain something to eat for Ms Karpenko and her brother and sister. She exchanged her earrings and a gold cross she wore around her neck for about 2kg of flour. Ms Karpenko takes the bread from the oven when it is ready. It is tough and tastes like grass. But thanks to this weed loaf, and a horsehide that her mother cut into pieces and boiled for soup, the Karpenko family managed to survive until the spring, when they could forage in the nearby forest. Others in their village, Matskivtsi, in central Ukraine, were not as fortunate. "There was a deathly silence," she says. "Because people weren't even conscious. They didn't want to speak or to look at anything." "They thought today that person died, and tomorrow it will be me. Everyone just thought of death." Silent wasteland Ukrainians mark a Holodomor Remembrance Day every year on the fourth Saturday of November. Some historians, like Yale University's Timothy Snyder, who has done extensive research in Ukraine, place the number of dead at roughly 3.3 million. Others say the number was much higher. Whatever the actual figure, it is a trauma that has left a deep and lasting wound among this nation of 45 million. Entire villages were wiped out, and in some regions the death rate reached one-third. The Ukrainian countryside, home of the "black earth", some of the most fertile land in the world, was reduced to a silent wasteland. Cities and roads were littered with the corpses of those who left their villages in search of food, but perished along the way. There were widespread reports of cannibalism. Ms Karpenko says that when school resumed the following autumn, two thirds of the seats were empty. Image caption A special opera, Red Earth Hunger, has been commissioned for this year's memorial But the pain of the Holodomor comes not only from the unfathomable number of dead. Many people believe the causes were man-made and intentional. A genocide. They say that Joseph Stalin wanted to starve into submission the rebellious Ukrainian peasantry and force them into collective farms. The Kremlin requisitioned more grain than farmers could provide. When they resisted, brigades of Communist Party activists swept through the villages and took everything that was edible. "The brigades took all the wheat, barley - everything - so we had nothing left," says Ms Karpenko. "Even beans that people had set aside just in case. "The brigades crawled everywhere and took everything. People had nothing left to do but die." Genocide row As the hunger mounted, Soviet authorities took extra measures, such as closing off Ukraine's borders, so that peasants could not travel abroad and obtain food. This amounted to a death sentence, experts say. "The government did everything it could to prevent peasants from entering other regions and looking for bread," says Oleksandra Monetova, from Kiev's Holodomor Memorial Museum. Image copyright AFP Image caption Viktor Yanukovych (L), like the Kremlin, says Holodomor was not genocide "The officials' intentions were clear. To me it's a genocide. I have no doubt." But for others, the question is still open. Russia in particular objects to the genocide label, calling it a "nationalistic interpretation" of the famine. Kremlin officials insist that, while the Holodomor was a tragedy, it was not intentional, and other regions in the Soviet Union suffered at that time. Kiev and Moscow have clashed over the issue in the past. But Ukraine's present leader Viktor Yanukovych echoes the Kremlin line, saying it was "incorrect and unjust" to consider the Holodomor "the genocide of a certain people". Mr Yanukovych's government still takes care to commemorate fully the destruction that the famine wrought. This year's Remembrance Day will feature a number of different ceremonies and prayer services, as well as the world premier of a Holodomor opera, Red Earth Hunger, by Virko Baley. Mr Baley, an American composer who was born in Ukraine, supports efforts to have the Holodomor recognised internationally as genocide. "You have to admit that it was done, if you want to have any kind of human progress," he says. "You can't wrap it up and say that it wasn't." Holodomor: Memories of Ukraine's silent massacre - BBC News
All I got to say is "Yeah? So?" Stalin starved to death 20 million people after WWII for the crime of not supporting him enough. Many, many US writers, "journalists" and alleged "reporters" went to see it and reported NOTHING! All I got to say is this is what fly over country would have looked like if Hitlery got in. Edit: I meant to say 20 mil. Sorry. Chell, I had you on ignore, when were you banned? Didn't notice.
There's no evidence of that many un-natural deaths to be found post WWII. There were a large number of deaths by famine in the 1946 time frame, which could be laid to Stalin if one figures he caused a drought. 60 million did not happen, period. Estimates of drought related deaths range up to the order of 1 million, but there is, of course, no way to verify it. I suspect that 60 million figure as sourceless hokum. Holodomor was real (and notably pre-war.) Some contend that the effects could have been lessened if Stalin had different policies in place, nonetheless drought took it's toll, abetted by deliberate central policy of production demands that could not be met.
I wish you would occasionally get your facts straight....the Stalinist genocide by artificially created famine in Ukraine, occurred some 13years before the end of WW2. Actually, the Ukrainian Kulak pogroms were a political motivated genocide to destroy the Kulak class of private land owner / farmers, hasten collectivisation of confiscated 'private property', and minimise the risk of effective resistance to Russian hegemony over Ukrainians. Although Russians considered Ukrainians inferior ethnic cousins, the genocide was not as much a racial genocide, as was the case of the Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs by the Nazis, as much as it was a political genocide....that the victims were Ukrainians was incidental, rather than the main objective of the genocide. Facts About the 1933 Famine-Genocide in Soviet Occupied Ukraine She would have to suspend the Constitution, convince the military to support an unlawful regime, and rely on the cooperation of a mass of armed patriot militias who would rather have her head on a pike, than obey any dictatorial decrees that she may have made. The USA is not a 1930's style communist dictatorship, quite yet..... Citation??? The population of Ukraine in 1940 was approximately 40million649K...are you seriously suggesting that 1.5 x the total 1940 population of Ukraine were exterminated 1932-19331933 ???? Demographics of Ukraine - Wikipedia The Holodomor 'famine' accounted for an estimated 7million or so deaths(including some 2 million children), which is no insignificant number http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm , but putting an absurdly yuuuuge number on the butcher's bill is simply silly, and calls into question the accuracy and truth of other 'factoids' you may have introduced into the discussion. Many reporters and journalists may have attempted to see conditions at first hand, but few actually made it into the affected area. Of those who did make it into Ukraine, some did file reports.... Gareth Jones Gareth Jones (journalist) - Wikipedia Gareth Jones Soviet Union Newspaper Articles 1930-33 William Henry Chamberlin William Henry Chamberlin - Wikipedia William Henry Chamberlin - Wikipedia Collectivism: A False Utopia, Harry Lang, The Holodomor Reader - Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932-1933 Malcolm Muggeridge Hercolano2: 05/14/12Hercolano2: UKRAINE - HOLODOMOR 1932-33, Malcolm Muggeridge INTERVIEW: "Deliberate," "Diabolical" Starvation and Thomas Walker. There were a number of reports, both by journalists and diplomats on the conditions in Ukraine in 1932-1933....whether many people actually cared about the Ukrainians' plight, when the average news reader was more concerned about their own local situation in the Great Depression, is as arguable as the concerns of well fed, and relatively prosperous Australians and Americans about the unfolding famine in South Sudan....it's far away...and doesn't impact directly on us, is probably the answer. But by all means....pull things out Ex Culo https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/PIDOOMA...it's much easier than doing a little fact checking before hand.
