Holodomor rememberance day

[Jaga]

This is quite a big celebration in Ukraine - a rememberance of a famine:

It was not until 2006 that the Holodomor, a devastating famine which took place in the Ukraine region of the Soviet Union, was recognized in the Ukrainian parliament as a deliberate act of genocide against the country’s people. The artificially introduced food shortage created under Stalin was at its peak in June 1933, with nearly 28,000 people starving to death every day. Estimates have put the total number of fatalities at approximately 7 million.

www.atlasobscura.com/places/holodomor-victims-memorial

[Jaga]

Here is about how people celebrate this feast:

share.america.gov/u-s-remembers-ukrainian-victims-of-holodomor/

ht

[pieter]

[karl]

Jaga

An interesting part of history that is shared by both Russia and Ukraine. With this, should never be forgotten as a chronical of history shared by both states. Under the rule of communist Russia with the leadership of Stalin, the only value Russia had to raise funding to match Western industry, was food in the form of grain supplies. And the primary source was the very rich black farmland soil found in Ukraine.

It was then as planned, the Ukrainian people paid the price with their lives to finance this Russian venture. As follows of url"

I do remember this from my school days in Denmark. We studied it as the Russian five year plan.

www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-deliberate-starvation-of-millions-in-ukraine/2017/11/03/0999f2d0-b8bb-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?utm_term=.1f252a0f120a


Karl

[pieter]

Holodomor


Starving Ukrainian family during the Holodomor, 1932–1933, in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (UkrSSR)

The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р; derived from морити голодом, "to kill by starvation") was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. It is also known as the Terror-Famine and Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, and sometimes referred to as the Great Famine or The Ukrainian Genocide of 1932–33. It was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–33, which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country. During the Holodomor, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.



Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly. According to higher estimates, up to 12 million ethnic Ukrainians were said to have perished as a result of the famine. A U.N. joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished. Research has since narrowed the estimates to between 3.3 and 7.5 million. According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kiev in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficit.


Starved Ukainian peasents on a Kharkiv street

Some scholars believe that the famine was planned by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement. Using Holodomor in reference to the famine emphasises its man-made aspects, arguing that actions such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs, and restriction of population movement confer intent, defining the famine as genocide; the loss of life has been compared to that of the Holocaust. The causes are still a subject of academic debate, and some historians dispute its characterization as a genocide.




Memorial to Holodomor victims in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo: Wikimedia Commons



Source: Wikipedia

[pieter]

Soviet famine of 1932–33


Soviet famine of 1932–33. Areas of most disastrous famine marked with black.

The Soviet famine of 1932–33 was a major famine that killed millions of people in the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region and Kazakhstan, the South Urals, and West Siberia. The Holodomor in Ukraine and Kazakh famine of 1932–33 have been seen as genocide committed by Joseph Stalin's government; it is estimated between 3.3 and 7.5 million died in Ukraine and ~2,000,000 (40% of all Kazakhs) died in Kazakhstan.



Between 2.4 and 4 million ethnic Ukrainians are estimated to have perished as a result of the famine. The exact number of deaths is hard to determine due to a lack of records, but the number increases significantly when the deaths in the heavily Ukrainian-populated Kuban region are included. Older estimates are still often cited in political commentary. According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kiev in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficit.



Stalin and other party members had ordered that kulaks were "to be liquidated as a class" Conquest, Robert (1986). The Harvest Sorrow. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 117. ISBN 0195051807. and so they became a target for the state. The richer, land-owning peasants were labeled 'kulaks" and were portrayed by the Bolsheviks as class enemies, which culminated Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of large numbers of the better-off peasants and their families in 1929–1932.



The forced collectivization of agriculture as a part of the Soviet first five-year plan, forced grain procurement, combined with rapid industrialisation, a decreasing agricultural workforce, and several bad droughts, were the main reasons for the famine. The famine is sometimes seen by historians as a deliberate act of genocide against ethnic Ukrainians and Kazakhs, though some disagree, citing the fact that land-owning peasants (Kulaks) were in favor of private property, which is diametrically opposed to the Communist Party's fundamental tenets.[15]:507 Gareth Jones was the first Western journalist to report the devastation.[16][17] In addition to the Kazakh famine of 1919–1922, in 10–15 years Kazakhstan lost more than half of its population due to the actions of the Soviet power. The famine made Kazakhs a minority in their own republic. Before the famine, around 60% of the republic's population were Kazakhs, but after the famine, only around 38% of the population were Kazakhs.


A Holodomor victim

[Jaga]

these are hard pictures to watch, but we need remember that such attrocities happened