Ukrainian Famine

[LA GUERRA OLVIDADA]

How bad was it? Who caused it? Was it inevitable? Should Stalin be blamed? Give us some backround for a debate all ye knowledgeable. Ukraine is now recognizing it as a genocide.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4471256.stm

[our_mutual_friend]

Well I don't know what caused it and how far Stalin was to blame *hangs head in shame at ignorance* but am disgusted at the possibility of genocide.

What I do have to say is that an upside of it is that (not that you should really look for an upside but ...) research into Census returns and gravestones from the famines have lead biologists to believe that genes can inherit problems through what happened to a person's ancestors (if a late at night memory serves me correctly)

Not exactly history and you can't say it was planned but there you go ...

But after reading the article I say that the historian is a bit screwed. Yeah, it may not have been a "national or ethnic group" but that doesn't mean that the genocide of peasants is to be allowed?? At least he admits the part about borders being closed and so affecting the whole country.

"We're not going to apologise ... there is nobody to apologise to" Hm, wonder why that is ...

[Redmau5]

If this is recognised as genocide, then the Irish famine should also be recognised as genocide.

[our_mutual_friend]

Gonna have to agree with you there, although Im sure the British government could quite easily wriggle out of that one (especially with Blair - hey!! It might finish him!!) seeing as their form of genocide was, perhaps, not quite so obvious as road blocks preventing escape from the country (seeing as some Irish managed to get away to Scotland and America during the Potato Famine)

[LA GUERRA OLVIDADA]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2005, 07:49 PM
If this is recognised as genocide, then the Irish famine should also be recognised as genocide.
This isn't about the Irish famine.

[Wiesty]

im not getting into this again....

[our_mutual_friend]

Originally posted by LA GUERRA OLVIDADA+Nov 26 2005, 08:29 PM--> (LA GUERRA OLVIDADA @ Nov 26 2005, 08:29 PM)
[email protected] 26 2005, 07:49 PM
If this is recognised as genocide, then the Irish famine should also be recognised as genocide.
This isn't about the Irish famine. [/b]
Fine! But no one else is commenting! And genocide is genocide ...

[bolshevik butcher]

No. There is a big difference. THe irish famine was a failure of crops, the situation was hindered by the british staes imperialism. However in Ukraine the crops were produced fine as usual, but Stalin had them taken to Russia. Major difference.

[our_mutual_friend]

But if you class the Irish famines as genocide then it is still genocide and it is still wrong.
I'm not saying that I believe it was - an unfortunate series of events, followed by what could then be called genocide, and compared to the forced taking of crops it is not the same. But in future times if both are under the same heading then they would both be seen as genocide.

[bolshevik butcher]

Yes, but the curical difference is that the british state only took advantage of an existing situation. In Ukraine Stalinist Russia actaully created the famine.

[our_mutual_friend]

Ok, I agree.

But if the future, if all are put under the general heading of genocide then who will know the difference except for those that make an effort to know?

[Hiero]

This has been done alot of times. Basically most people totally deny that the Kulaks had a major part to play in the cause of the famine. Or they portray the Kulaks as resisting evil imperialist Stalinism. This is a brought on by western and old Nazi sources that took an oppurtunist chance to portray Stalin as a monster.

I find it quite disturbing that many so called "Marxist" love the idea of the Kulaks destroying food or they like to ignore it even happen. So much for class analysis.

[tatu]

An interesting article regarding the `Ukrainian Holocaust'.

http://snipurl.com/k9jb

[Redmau5]

Originally posted by Clenched [email protected] 27 2005, 01:09 PM
No. There is a big difference. THe irish famine was a failure of crops, the situation was hindered by the british staes imperialism. However in Ukraine the crops were produced fine as usual, but Stalin had them taken to Russia. Major difference.
Well the British continued to remove food from Ireland when it was clearly needed in Ireland. Obviously, with the failure of Ireland's main crop, there was going to be deaths from starvation. But this was accelerated by Britain's continual shipping of food from Ireland to England. So, in effect, the British were actively starving and depriving the Irish people of desperately needed food.


From Cork harbor on one day in 1847 2 the AJAX steamed for England with 1,514 firkins of butter, 102 casks of pork, 44 hogsheads of whiskey, 844 sacks of oats, 247 sacks of wheat, 106 bales of bacon, 13 casks of hams, 145 casks of porter, 12 sacks of fodder, 28 bales of feathers, 8 sacks of lard, 296 boxes of eggs, 30 head of cattle, 90 pigs, 220 lambs, 34 calves and 69 miscellaneous packages. On November 14, 1848 3, sailed, from Cork harbor alone: 147 bales of bacon, 120 casks and 135 barrels of pork, 5 casks of hams, 149 casks of miscellaneous provisions (foodstuff); 1,996 sacks & 950 barrels of oats; 300 bags of flour; 300 head of cattle; 239 sheep; 9,398 firkins of butter; 542 boxes of eggs. On July 28, 1848 4; a typical day's food shipments from only the following four ports: from Limerick: the ANN, JOHN GUISE and MESSENGER for London; the PELTON CLINTON for Liverpool; and the CITY OF LIMERICK, BRITISH QUEEN, and CAMBRIAN MAID for Glasgow. This one-day removal of Limerick's food was of 863 firkins of butter; 212 firkins, 1,198 casks and 200 kegs of lard, 87 casks of ham; 267 bales of bacon; 52 barrels of pork; 45 tons and 628 barrels of flour; 4,975 barrels of oats and 1,000 barrels of barley. From Kilrush: the ELLEN for Bristol; the CHARLES G. FRYER and MARY ELLIOTT for London. This one-day removal was of 550 tons of County Clare's oats and 15 tons of its barley. From Tralee: the JOHN ST. BARBE, CLAUDIA and QUEEN for London; the SPOKESMAN for Liverpool. This one-day removal was of 711 tons of Kerry's oats and 118 tons of its barley. From Galway: the MARY, VICTORIA, and DILIGENCE for London; the SWAN and UNION for Limerick (probably for transshipment to England). This one-day removal was of 60 sacks of Co. Galway's flour; 30 sacks and 292 tons of its oatmeal; 294 tons of its oats; and 140 tons of its miscellaneous provisions (foodstuffs). British soldiers forcibly removed it from its starving Limerick, Clare, Kerry and Galway producers.

In Belmullet, Co. Mayo the mission of 151 soldiers 5 of the 49th Regiment was to guard a few tons of meal from the hands of the starving; its population falling from 237 to 105 between 1841 and 1851. Belmullet also lost its source of fish in January, 1849, when Britain's Coast Guard arrested its fleet of enterprising fishermen ten miles at sea in the act of off-loading flour from a passing ship. They were sentenced to prison and their currachs were confiscated.

The Waterford Harbor British army commissariat officer wrote to British Treasury Chief Charles Trevelyan on April 24, 1846; "The barges leave Clonmel once a week for this place, with the export supplies under convoy which, last Tuesday, consisted of 2 guns, 50 cavalry, and 80 infantry escorting them on the banks of the Suir as far as Carrick." While its people starved, the Clonmel district exported annually, along with its other farm produce, approximately 60,000 pigs in the form of cured pork.

From Irish Holocaust (http://www.irishholocaust.org/)

[Wiesty]

The Famine was caused by forced collectivization, the crops were totally wiped clean, and if a civillian took any for themselves, they were either immidiatley shot, or sent to north to the gulags.

[Bolshevist]

Originally posted by Makaveli_05+Nov 26 2005, 07:55 PM--> (Makaveli_05 @ Nov 26 2005, 07:55 PM)If this is recognised as genocide, then the Irish famine should also be recognised as genocide.[/b]
The Irish famines were the result of colonial mismanagment by the British, the Ukranian famines were the result of collectivisation gone wrong, mostly to blame on the kulaks. This is quite interesting to read concerning Ukraine in the 1930's:


John [email protected] 2002

Coming now to the famine itself and its causes, the factors of drought and sabotage during the process of collectivisation are generally given little attention by right wing historians. Interestingly, in "A History of the Ukraine" by Mikhail Hrushevsky - described by the Nationalists themselves as "Ukraine's leading historian" - we read that "Again a year of drought coincided with chaotic agricultural conditions; and during the winter of 1932-3 a great famine, like that of 1921-2 swept across Soviet Ukraine". Nowhere does this history suggest that the famine was deliberate and aimed against Ukrainians, and in fact more space is devoted to the famine of 1921-22. There are many references to drought conditions in the Ukraine in 1931 and 1932. Even Ewald Ammende in his "Human Life in Russia" refers to climatic and natural causes of the famine.

While drought was a contributing factor, the main cause of the famine was the struggle around collectivisation of the countryside in this period. In 1928 there were millions of small scale peasant farms, three quarters of the land was sown by hand, one third of the crop areas was harvested by sickle and scythe, 40% of the crop was threshed by flail. Over one quarter of peasant households possessed no draught animals or farming implements, and 47% had only ploughs. The drive to collectivisation was a key feature of the first five year plan launched in 1929. The small minority of rich peasants, the kulaks, opposed socialisation of agriculture and fought against collectivisation with an organised campaign of large-scale destruction. The struggle in some areas including the Ukraine approached civil war scale. Visiting foreign observers at the time noted that kulak opposition took the form of slaughtering their cattle and horses rather than having them collectivised. From 1928-33 the number of horses in the Soviet Union fell from 30 to 15 million, cattle from 70 to 38 million, sheep and goats from 147 to 50 million. Some kulaks burned down the property of collectives and even burned their own crops and seed grain. Many famine-genocide theorists discount kulak sabotage, but others offer enthusiastic descriptions celebrating the opposition to Soviet planning. In addition the famine was compounded by typhus epidemics which undoubtedly claimed many lives. By 1933 there was a successful harvest, enormous efforts were put into improving collective farms and providing mechanised equipment.

Subsequent huge increases in agricultural and industrial output in the Ukraine leading up to the second world war give the lie to allegations or 7 - 15 million starvation deaths only seven years earlier. In addition, the record of Ukrainian resistance to the Nazis and their Ukrainian nationalist auxiliaries was exemplary. In the largest eastern portion of the Ukraine loyalty was overwhelming and active. There were over half a million organised Soviet guerrillas, and four and a half million ethnic Ukrainians fought in the Soviet army. The Ukrainian nationalist histories acknowledge this, and one can only wonder at the ability of a nation to mobilise such numbers of military aged males in the light of Nationalist claims about famine victims. The reality was that for the bulk of the Ukrainian peasants, workers and the professionals newly emerged from those classes, the Soviet system had demonstrated overwhelming economic and cultural advantages.

The only place where the Nationalists found any kind of base during the Nazi occupation was in what had been up to 1939 Polish Galicia; this is where the Nazis did their bulk of recruiting for the fascist police and SS units. An examination of what happened during the Nazi occupation is revealing not only in terms of the popular support for the Soviets demonstrated by the people of the Ukraine, but also for the role played by the Ukrainian Nationalists.