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Holodomor denial

2008-02-25T12:33:08Z

Bandurist:

'''Holodomor Denial ''' is the act of stating that the [[Holodomor]], the disastrous famine of 1932-1933 in Eastern Ukraine (then known as the [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic]], in the [[Soviet Union]]), never took place.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2002/280214.shtml Famine denial The Ukrainian Weekly, July 14, 2002, No. 28, Vol. LXX]</ref><ref>''

Initially he Soviet government dismissed all references to the famine as anti-Soviet propaganda. Denial of the famine declined after the Communist Party lost power and the Soviet empire disintegrated'' @ [http://books.google.com/books?ei=_WZ3R9CwDZnmtQO3xeXQCg&id=c-8YAAAAIAAJ&dq=Holodomor+Denial&q=%22Denial+of+the+famine%22&pgis=1#search Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity By Dinah Shelton; Page 1055] ISBN 0028658485</ref><ref>After over half a century of denial, in January 1990 the [[Communist Party of Ukraine]] adopted a special resolution admitting that the Ukrainian Famine had indeed occurred. [http://books.google.com/books?id=5Ef8Hrx8Cd0C&pg Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts - Page 93] ISBN 0415944295</ref>

The Holodomor was denied immediately and repeatedly by Soviet authorities (starting with President [[Mikhail Kalinin]] and Foreign Minister [[Maxim Litvinov]]), and this denial continued unabated, well into the 1980s.<ref name="Conquest">[[Robert Conquest]], ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine'' [[Oxford University Press]] (1987), ISBN 0195051807, p. 308. [http://books.google.com/books?id=Bp31GmfH-6YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=harvest+of+sorrow&sig=ONivvVYlMPCPY0pb41NXw-AL8dE#PPA320,M1]</ref>

The Soviet stance was supported by Soviet-friendly journalists in the [[Western world|West]], such as [[Walter Duranty]] and [[Louis Fischer]]. Today, Holodomor denial continues to exist among leftist fringe writers and pseudo-scholars. It is not supported by serious academic scholars.

In 1997 the Soviet Union finally aknowleged the Holodomor. In November 2006, the [[Verkhovna Rada|Ukrainian Parliament]] passed a bill branding the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.<ref>Jan Maksymiuk, [http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/11/03ac02a4-6e3a-481b-8932-fafd4c13abab.html "Ukraine: Parliament Recognizes Soviet-Era Famine As Genocide"], ''[[Radio Free Europe|RFE/RL]]'', [[November 29]], [[2006]]</ref> In November 2007, the [[government of Ukraine]] tabled a law which would make public statements of both Holodomor and [[Holocaust denial]] illegal acts in Ukraine.

==Soviet Union==
===Initial cover-up during the famine===

The Soviet leadership undertook extensive efforts to prevent the spread of any information about the Holodomor. State communications about the famine were kept a [[top secret]]. [[Joseph Stalin]] and [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] sent a telegram to the party and provincial police chiefs requiring that Ukrainian peasants going north to [[Russia]] to seek bread were to be stopped.<ref>[[Robert Conquest]] ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company (2004), ISBN 0-393-05933-2, page 102.</ref> The telegram blamed the influx of peasants on [[Poland|Polish]] agents, who allegedly wanted to start a famine scare. [[State Political Directorate|OGPU]] chairman [[Genrikh Yagoda]] reported that over two hundred thousands peasants had been sent back. The secret correspondence included a letter sent by a party official from [[Dnipropetrovsk]] where he warned that "there will be no one left" alive to sow and ensure grain production, unless some amount of grain will not be taken. Molotov replied that the needs of the state, as "defined in party resolutions", are more important than the lives of people.<ref>[[Robert Conquest]] ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company (2004), ISBN 0-393-05933-2, page 102.</ref>

Various acts were committed to conceal the true number of dead people. Out of 9,472 only 3,997 corpses were registered in the Kyiv Medical Inspectorate. Similar cover-ups took place everywhere.<ref name="reflections"/>

===Early years===

While the famine was taking place, [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] authorities denied its existence. It was a criminal offense to mention the famine, punishable with a five-year term in the [[Gulag]] [[labor camp]]s; placing the blame on the authorities led to a death sentence.<ref name="reflections">[[Robert Conquest]] ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, p. 96</ref>

As a result the population growth failed to meet the expected targets set by the Communist party. When this became evident from the population statistics data, three successive heads of the [[Goskomstat|Soviet Central Statistical Administration]] were executed, while others were arrested.<ref>Lisa Shymko, [http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12306 "The Politics of Genocide"], ''[[The American Spectator]]'', [[November 14]] [[2007]]</ref>

The [[Soviet Census (1937)|1937 Soviet Census]] was thought to be exemplary due to its apparent thoroughness and near-perfect organization. Government officials in charge of the census received state awards immediately upon the census conclusion. When it became apparent that the final population figures were significantly lower than expected, the results were classified and the census organizers were repressed. The new [[Soviet Census (1939)|1939 census]] was organized in such a way as to have certainly inflated data on population numbers. It showed a population figure of 170.6 million people, manipulated so as to match the numbers stated by [[Joseph Stalin]] in his report to the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party. No other censuses were conducted until 1959.

=== Official Holodomor denial by Soviet officials ===

Soviet President [[Mikhail Kalinin]] responded to Western offers of food by telling of “political cheats who offer to help the starving Ukraine,” and commented that, “only the most decadent classes are capable of producing such cynical elements."<ref>[http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3513136.html How Liberals Funked It]</ref><ref name="reflections"/>

In an interview with [[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones]] in March 1933, Soviet Foreign Minister [[Maxim Litvinov]] stated, “Well, there is no famine", and went on to say, "You must take a longer view. The present hunger is temporary. In writing books you must have a longer view. It would be difficult to describe it as hunger.”<ref name="Jones-Litvinov">[[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones]], [http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/st_patricks/litvinov_famine_denia_oldl.htm Interview with Maxim Litvinov], March 1933</ref>

On instructions from Litvinov, Boris Skvirsky, embassy counselor of the recently opened Soviet Embassy in the [[United States]], published a letter on [[January 3]], [[1934]], in response to a pamphlet about the Holodomor.<ref name="Carynnyk">Marco Carynnyk, [http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1983/398325.shtml "The New York Times and the Great Famine"], ''The Ukrainian Weekly'', [[September 25]], [[1983]], No. 39, Vol. LI</ref> In his letter, Skvirsky stated that the idea that the Soviet government was "deliberately killing the population of the Ukraine" "wholly grotesque." He claimed that the Ukrainian population was increasing at an annual rate of 2 percent during the preceding five years. He asserted that the death rate in Ukraine "was the lowest of that of any of the constituent republics composing the Soviet Union," concluding that it "was about 35 percent lower than the pre-war death rate of [[Russian Empire|tsarist]] days."<ref name="Mace">James E. Mace, [http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml "Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine"] (paper delivered at a conference on "Recognition and Denial of Genocide and Mass Killing in the 20th Century", held in [[New York City]] on [[November 13]], [[1987]]), ''[[The Ukrainian Weekly]]'', [[January 10]], [[1988]], No. 2, Vol. LVI</ref>

===The early 1980s===

In 1983 for the first time, Holodomor remembrance was co-ordinated by the Ukrainian community world wide. The [[Ukrainian diaspora]] exerted pressure on the media and various governments, including the governments of the [[United States]] and [[Canada]], to raise the issue of the Holodomor with the government of the Soviet Union. The United States created a Commission into the famine. The Soviet authorities predicted this commission would place the Soviet state responsible for the act.<ref name="symp">[http://www.cym.org/au/archives/Holodomor.pdf The Great Famine of 1932-33 - A Symposium], [[22 October]], [[2003]], pp.4-5</ref>

In an attempt to counter this, the [[Soviet government]] admitted that some peasantry died to climatic conditions mainly [[drought]].

===Glasnost and the late 1980s===

The future [[President of Ukraine]], [[Leonid Kravchuk]], was charged in 1983 with finding rainfall evidence for the 1930s famine. However, Kravchuk's inquiry into the rainfalls for the 1933-1932 period found that they were within normal parameters.<ref name="Bandera">Stephen Bandera, [http://www.homin.ca/news_view.php?category=top&news=1016&lang=en "Holodomor as a source of national unity"], ''Ukrainian Echo'', [[February 5]], [[2007]]</ref>

It was only during the late 1980s that the Soviet Government admitted that its agricultural policies played a direct role in the causing Holodomor. Ultimately, as President of Ukraine, Kravchuk would admit to the cover-up attempts, and support in recognizing the Holodomor as genocide.<ref name="Bandera"/>

==Contemporary denial outside of the USSR==

===Walter Duranty and ''The New York Times''===

One of the first Western Holodomor deniers was [[Walter Duranty]]. Duranty was the winner of the 1932 [[Pulitzer prize]] in journalism in the category of correspondence, for his dispatches on [[Russia]] and the working out of the [[Five-Year Plan (USSR)|Five Year Plan]].<ref>[http://duranty.pelech.org/duranty2003/pulitzer2003.pdf "Correspondence between Markian Pelech and the Board of the Pulitzer Prizes regarding Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize"] ([[December 30]], [[2002]]–[[April 28]], [[2003]])</ref> While the famine was raging, he wrote in the pages of ''[[The New York Times]]'' that "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda," and that "There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."<ref>[[Arnold Beichman]], [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/791vwuaz.asp ''Pulitzer-Winning Lies''], ''[[The Weekly Standard]]'', [[June 12]] [[2003]]</ref>

In his reports, Duranty downplayed the impact of food shortages in Ukraine. In private however, he told [[Eugene Lyons]] and reported to the [[United Kingdom|British]] Embassy that at least seven million had died of famine <ref> Embassy dispatch dated [[30 September]] [[1933]] included the following: "According to Mr. Duranty the population of [[North Caucasus]] and the Lower [[Volga River|Volga]] had decreased in the past year by three million, and the population of Ukraine by four to five million" (cited from ''"Reflections on the ravaged century"'', p. 123)</ref>. Duranty acted more like a spokesman for the Soviet government than an independent reporter for a Western newspaper. As Duranty wrote in a dispatch from Moscow in March 1933, "Conditions are bad, but there is no famine... But—to put it brutally—you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."<ref name="NYT">[http://www.nytco.com/company/awards/statement.html "New York Times Statement About 1932 Pulitzer Prize Awarded to Walter Duranty"]</ref>

Duranty wrote articles denying the fact that the Holodomor was taking place in Ukraine. He also wrote denunciations of those who wrote about the famine, accusing them of being reactionaries and [[anti-communism|anti-Bolshevik]] [[propaganda|propagandists]]. Duranty continued to repeat Soviet disinformation without verifying its veracity. As the ''New York Times'' notes: "Taking Soviet propaganda at face value this way was completely misleading, as talking with ordinary Russians might have revealed even at the time."<ref name="NYT"/>

In August 1933, [[Theodor Cardinal Innitzer]] of [[Vienna]] called for relief efforts, stating that the Ukrainian famine was claiming lives “likely. . . numbered. . . by the millions” and driving those still alive to [[infanticide]] and [[cannibalism]]. ''The New York Times'', [[August 20]], [[1933]], reported Innitzer’s charge and published an official denial: “in the Soviet Union we have neither [[cannibalism|cannibals]] nor [[cardinal (Catholicism)|cardinals]]”. The next day, the Times added Duranty’s own denial.

[[United Kingdom|British]] journalist [[Malcolm Muggeridge]] characterized Duranty as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism."<ref>[[Robert Conquest]]. ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine'' [[Oxford University Press]] (1987), ISBN 0195051807, page 320. [http://books.google.com/books?id=Bp31GmfH-6YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=harvest+of+sorrow&sig=ONivvVYlMPCPY0pb41NXw-AL8dE#PPA320,M1]</ref>

Campaigns were launched in 1986 for the retraction of the Pulitzer Prize given to ''[[The New York Times]]''. Despite the fact that the [[Times]] admits that the fraudulent coverage led to it receiving the prize, they have refused to relinquish it.<ref>[http://duranty.pelech.org/duranty2003/pulitzer2003.pdf Correspondence between Markian Pelech and the Board of Pulitzer Prizes]</ref> The Times acknowledges that "some of Duranty's editors criticized his reporting as tendentious", and that "collectivization was the main cause of a famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine, the Soviet [[breadbasket]], in 1932 and 1933 - two years after Duranty won his prize."<ref name="NYT"/>

===Louis Fischer and ''The Nation''===

[[Louis Fischer]], an American reporter who glossed over Soviet reality had a deep ideological commitment to [[communism]] dating back to 1920. Fischer traveled to Ukraine in October and November of 1932, for ''[[The Nation]]'', and was initially alarmed at what he saw. "In the [[Poltava]], [[Vinnitsa]], [[Podolsk]] and [[Kiev]] regions, conditions will be hard," he wrote, "I think there is no starvation anywhere in Ukraine now — after all they have just gathered in the harvest but it was a bad harvest."

Initially critical of the Soviet grain procurement program because it created food problem, Fischer adopted the official Soviet government view, which blamed the problem on Ukrainian [[counter-revolutionary]] [[Nationalism|nationalist]] "[[Wrecking (Soviet crime)|wreckers]]." It seemed "whole villages" had been "contaminated" by such men, who were deported to "lumbering camps and mining areas in distant agricultural areas which are now just entering upon their pioneering stage." These steps were forced upon the [[Kremlin]], Fischer wrote, but the Soviets were, nevertheless, learning how to rule wisely.

Fischer was on a lecture tour in the United States when [[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones']] famine story broke. Speaking to a college audience in [[Oakland, California]], a week later, Fischer stated emphatically: "There is no starvation in [[Russia]]." He spent the spring of 1933 campaigning for American diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union. As rumors of a famine in the USSR reached American shores, Fischer continued to vociferously deny the reports.

Fischer's article entitled "Russia's Last Hard Year," stated, "The first half of 1933 was very difficult indeed. Many people simply did not have sufficient nourishment." Fischer blamed poor weather and the refusal of peasants to harvest the grain, which then rotted in the fields. Government requisitions drained the countryside of food, he admitted, but military needs (a potential conflict with [[Japan]]) explained the need for such deadly thoroughness in grain collections.<ref name="fischer">[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/westobservs.htm Louis Fisher], at ArtUkraine.com</ref>

Fischer maintained his general optimism about the Soviet Union through the publication of his ''Soviet Journey'' in 1935. The book devoted three pages to a discussion of the famine of 1932-1933, where he wrote of food left rotting in the fields as the result of peasants' "passive resistance." Fischer once again blamed the peasants directly for having "brought the calamity upon themselves" and stressed the positive results ensuing from Bolshevik victory in the countryside, and connected the famine to peasant action (or inaction).<ref name="fischer"/>

===Communist Party of the USA ===

The Ukrainian American community upon receiving reports of the Famine in November and December 1933 organized marches in a number of U.S. cities to protest against American recognition of a government which was starving millions of Ukrainians.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref name="sulz">[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref> [[Communist Party USA|American Communists]] resorted to violence in an attempt to silence the Ukrainians.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref><ref>[http://www.shevchenko.org/famine/21_27.htm Dushnyck, Walter. 50 Years Ago: The Famine Holocaust in Ukraine: Terror and Human Misery as Instruments of Russian Imperialism]</ref> On [[November 18]], [[1933]], in [[New York City]], 8,000 Ukrainians marched from [[Washington Square Park, New York|Washington Square Park]] to 67th Street, while 500 Communists ran beside the parade and snatched the Ukrainians' handbills, spat on the marchers and tried to hit them.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref> Five persons were injured.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref> Only the presence of 300 policemen on foot and a score on horseback leading the parade and riding along its flanks prevented serious trouble.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref name="sulz">

In [[Chicago]], on [[December 17]], [[1933]], several hundred Communists mounted a massed attack on the vanguard of 5,000 Ukrainian American marchers, leaving over 100 injured in what ''The New York Times'' called "the worst riot in years":

"Brick, clubs, rotten eggs and other missiles rained on the marchers from the Hermitage Avenue elevated station bridging Madison Street. The street fight which followed saw brass knuckles, blackjacks, fists and rifle butts used until a dozen squads of police restored order."<ref name="Mace"/>

=== Holodomor denial by Foreign Dignitaries visiting the USSR ===

Prominent dignitaries who visited the Soviet Union in 1934, such as [[George Bernard Shaw]] and [[H. G. Wells]], are also on record as denying the existence of the Famine in Ukraine<ref>[http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/communism/com107.html Stalin-Wells talk / the verbatim record and a discussion by G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, J.M. Keynes, E. Toller and others]</ref>.

In 1934 the British Foreign Office in the House of Lords stated that there was no evidence to support the allegations against the Soviet government regarding the Famine in Ukraine. The testimony of Sir John Maynard, a renowned famine expert who visited the Ukraine in the summer of 1933 rejected tales of famine-genocide propagated by the Ukrainians<ref>[http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/ukrainian.html The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth]</ref>.

The height of manipulation was reached during a visit to Ukraine carried out between [[August 26]] and [[September 9]], [[1933]], by [[Prime Minister of France|French Prime Minister]] [[Edouard Herriot]], who denied accounts of the famine. The day before his arrival, all beggars, homeless children and starving people were removed from the streets. Shop windows in local stores were filled with food, but purchases were forbidden, and anyone coming too close to the stores was arrested. The streets were washed. Just like all other [[Western World|Western]] visitors, Herriot met fake "peasants," all selected Communists or Komsomol members, who showed him healthy cattle.<ref>''Reflections'', p. 122</ref> Herriot declared to the press that there was no famine in Ukraine, that he did not see any trace of it, and that this showed adversaries of the Soviet Union were spreading the rumor. "When one believes that the Ukraine is devastated by famine, allow me to shrug my shoulders," he declared. The [[September 13]] [[1933]] issue of ''[[Pravda]]'' was able to write that Herriot "categorically contradicted the lies of the bourgeoisie press in connection with a famine in the
USSR."<ref>[http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/ukraine2005/Etienne%20Thevein%20%20English%20translation.pdf "France, Germany and Austria Facing the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine"]</ref>.

The lack of knowledge of this genocide was observed by English writer [[George Orwell]], who commented that "''huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of [[England|English]] [[Russophiles]]"''.<ref>George Orwell, "''Notes on Nationalism''" in "The ''Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell''" ([[London]], 1968), Vol. 3, p. 370.</ref>

Orwell clearly knew of a press cover-up about the famine as in his 1945, Proposed Preface to Animal Farm he wrote:
“…it was considered equally proper to publicize famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.”<ref>[http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/farmer_jones-%20reorder.htm Was Gareth Jones's surname behind George Orwell’s naming of ‘Farmer Jones' in Animal Farm?.]</ref> For an interesting 'work-in-progress' including a discussion on the influence of the Ukrainian Famine and Holodomor denial by Duranty on Orwell's book "Animal Farm" see Nigel Colley's article [http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/farmer_jones-%20reorder.htm Was Gareth Jones's surname behind George Orwell’s naming of ‘Farmer Jones' in Animal Farm?].

==Modern denial==
===The 50th Anniversary===

The rallying and lobbying of the Ukrainian Diaspora Community around the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor became a concern for the governing body of the Soviet Union.<ref name="symp"/> In February 1983, the [[Politburo]] of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] (CPSU) activated its counter-[[propaganda]] section to focus on the Ukrainian famine. The head of the directorate for relations with foreign countries for the CPSU, A. Merkulov, was given the task of directing [[disinformation]] to the West and contacted [[Leonid Kravchuk]], the chief idealog for the Communist Party in Ukraine. The materials were to be sent to the [[RIA Novosti|Novosti Press]] (APN) centers in the [[United States]] and [[Canada]] to demonstrate the "antidemocratic base of the Ukrainian bourgeois Nationalists, the collaboration of the [[Stepan Bandera|Banderovtsev]] and the [[Adolf Hitler|Hitlerite]] Fascists during the [[World War II|Second World War]]."<ref>ЦГАООУ. Ф.1. Оп. 25 Д. 2719. Л.27-28. Подлинник.</ref>

In preparation for the expected rise in activity associated with the 55th anniversary, the Soviet Union launched a campaign of disinformation. In [[Canada]], the [[Association of United Ukrainian Canadians]] (a pro-Communist Labor temple (Hall) movement in the Ukrainian community) published numerous articles denying the Holodomor in Ukraine in its English and Ukrainian language magazines and newspapers. Through its chain of bookstore outlets, it distributed pamphlets and materials whose point supplied to them from the counter-propaganda section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 2007, correspondence and instructions from Soviet sources such as the [[Ukraina Society]] to the organization regarding the Holodomor have been made available for study by scholars.

In an open letter to [[Mikhail Gorbachov]] in August 1987, veteran dissident [[Viacheslav Chornovil]] wrote about the denial of the Holodomor by the Communist Party of the USSR, and also Western denial.<ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/historical/sovcrimes.htm "Soviet crimes remain unpunished"]</ref>
<blockquote>
"The biggest and most infamous blank spot in the Soviet history of Ukraine is the hollow silence for over 50 years about the genocide of the Ukrainian nation organized by Stalin and his henchmen ... The Great Famine of 1932-33, which took millions of human lives. In one year - 1933 - my people lost more than throughout all of World War II, which ravaged our land."
</blockquote>

===Douglas Tottle and Holodomor denial ===

In 1987 the Canadian trade-unionist and activist [[Douglas Tottle]], published the controversial book ''Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: the Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard'', where he claimed that the Holodomor was "fraudulent", and "a creation of [[Nazism|Nazi]] propagandists".<ref name="tottle">Douglas Tottle, [http://www.rationalrevolution.net/special/library/famine.htm/ "Fraud, famine, and fascism: the Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard"], Toronto: Progress Books, 1987. ISBN 0919396518</ref> By the author's own account, his book is only carried by 28 libraries around the world. His book, published by the Communist ''Progress Publishers'' in [[Toronto]], appeared practically at the same time Ukrainian Communist party leader [[Volodymyr Shcherbytsky]] publicly acknowledged the Holodomor, in December 1987, and the book was subsequently withdrawn from circulation.<ref>[http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-September/021722.html link Letter from David R. Marples]</ref> Only the first two chapters of the book deal with the Famine in Ukraine. The rest is written to discredit the work done by western Scholars, to associate the Ukrainian diaspora in the West with Fascism, and to discredit the US support of Holodomore research. Nevertheless, the book is available on the internet, and continues to be cited as an "invaluable" and "important" book by groups such as the [[Stalin Society]] in [[Great Britain]], author [[Jeff Coplon]], and others.

In a review of Tottle's book in the ''[[Ukrainian Canadian Magazine]]'', published by the pro-Communist Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, [[Wilfred Szczesny]] wrote: "Members of the general public who want to know about the famine, its extent and causes, and about the motives and techniques of those who would make this tragedy into something other than what it was will find Tottle's work invaluable" (''The Ukrainian Canadian'', April 1988, p. 24).<ref name="Szcz">[http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/serbyn/ "The last stand of the Ukrainian famine-genocide deniers"]</ref>

In his book, ''Searching for place'', Lubomyr Luciuk comments: "For a particularly base example of famine-denial literature, see Tottle, ''Fraud, famine, and fascism...''".<ref>Lubomyr Luciuk, ''Searching for place: Ukrainian displaced persons, Canada, and the migration of memory'', Toronto: [[University of Toronto Press]], 2000, p. 413. ISBN 0802042457</ref> Professor [[Roman Serbyn]] a professor of history at the University of Quebec at Montreal has published an analysis and review of Tottles book which is available [http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/serbyn/ here].

===Jeff Coplon===

Tottle's book inspired a number of articles by other Holodomor deniers, such as [[Jeff Coplon]]'s article ''"In Search of a Soviet Holocaust"''.<ref name="coplon">Jeff Coplon, [http://www.chss.montclair.edu/English/furr/vv.html "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust"], ''[[The Village Voice]]'', [[January 12]], [[1988]].</ref> This article not only denies the Holodomor, but also tries to associate those who continued to bring the Holodomor to the attention of the public with the [[Nazism|Nazis]], even giving quotes from [[Adolf Hitler]]'s ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' to stress this point.
<blockquote>
"Just as the Nazis used the OUN for their own ends, so has [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] exploited the famine, from his purple-prosed commemoration of "this callous act" to his backing of the Mace commission. ... But if people could be convinced that Communism is worse than fascism; that [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] was an insane monster, even worse than Hitler; that the seven million died in more unspeakable agony than the six million ... One cannot appease an [[Evil empire|Evil Empire]], after all.<ref name="conlon" />
</blockquote>
Coplon also penned the article ''"Rewriting History - How Ukrainian nationalists imposed their doctored history on High School Students"'' heavily relying on Tottle's publication with his additional comments regarding the inclusion the Holodomor as one of a number of subjects included in the curriculum for social studies classes in New York. In the article published in the magazine "CAPITAL Region" March 1988, he wrote: <blockquote>
''"The losers, of course, are the New York state schoolchildren, who will absorb this disinformation between algebra and chemistry - and may even be asked to parrot the fraud for a higher score on their regents exam."''
<ref>[http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/essays/coplonrewriting88.pdf Rewriting History - How Ukrainian nationalists imposed their doctored history on High School Students]</ref>
</blockquote>

Other similar writings include an article by [[Wilfred Szczesny]] ("Fraud, Famine and Fascism", ''The Ukrainian Canadian'', April 1988); an unsigned article ("The Ukrainian Famine: Fact or Fiction"), which appeared in the ''[[McGill Daily]]'', [[November 22]], [[1988]],<ref name="Szcz" /> and Challenge-Desafio's ("The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33"),<ref>[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33]</ref> which appeared in a newspaper of the [[Progressive Labor Party (United States)|Progressive Labor Party]] in 1987.<ref>[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html "The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33"], ''Challenge-Desafio'', [[February 25]], [[1987]].</ref>

===Stephan Merl===

In 1989, [[Stephan Merl]] (a professor at [[Bielefeld University]]) published "Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot von 1932-1933 zur Auslöschung des ukrainischen Nationalismus?".<ref>Stephan Merl, "Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot von 1932-1933 zur Auslöschung des ukrainischen Nationalismus?", ''Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas'' 37 (1989), vol. 4, p. 569-590</ref> This publication, once again relying heavily on Tottle, describes the work of [[James Mace]] and [[Robert Conquest]] as part of a campaign by Ukrainian nationalists to discredit the Soviet Union and pillory liberal journalists like Walter Duranty.<ref>[http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-September/021722.html Letters of David Marples]</ref>

===Mario Sousa===

In 1998 [[Mario Sousa]] published "''Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union''"[http://www.mariosousa.se/LiesconcerningthehistoryoftheSovietUnion.html Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union].

Sousa's arguments against the Holodomor are based on his interpretation that the early Holodomor campaign was started by the Nazi's and was later taken up and funded by Ukrainian refugees who he states were Nazi collaborators. Sousa continues that Holodomor scholarship was later supported by the CIA during the [[Cold War]] specifically aimed at slandering and discrediting the Soviet government.

===The Stalin Society===

Holodomor denial continues into the 21st century with the publication of "''The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth''", a pamphlet penned by prominent British physician [[John Puntis]] and published in July 2002 by the [[Stalin Society]]. The Stalin Society itself has been described as "''tiny, aging and schism-ridden''"<ref>[http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article120991.ece "Stalin apologists drink to the memory of Uncle Joe"], ''[[The Independent]]'', [[2 March]] [[2003]]</ref>. Once again heavily relying on Tottle, facts are reinterpreted with sources questioned, numbers questioned and the whole history of the famine made to look like the continuation of the Cold War<ref>[http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/ukrainian.html#After The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth]</ref>.

==Holodomor denial in University courses==

In 2004 Toronto University offered a history course on "The Soviet Union and the Stalin Question" by M. Rodsky. Rather than starting from a neutral point of view, Rodsky took a revisionist version of Stalin and the history of the Soviet Union. In his third lecture in the series he approached "The Famine in Ukraine: What is the Truth?". The reading list consisted exclusively of materials that denied the existence of the Holodomor<ref>[http://individual.utoronto.ca/mrodden/study/ssustudy.html The Soviet Union and the Stalin Question]</ref>.

* In Search of a SOVIET HOLOCAUST (short reading)[http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/vv.html Here]
* The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33 (longer reading)[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html here]
* Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union by Mario Sousa (scroll down and read 'The myth concerning the famine in the Ukraine')
* Maoist Internationalist Movement's Review of the [http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/bookstore/commie.html The Black Book of Communism]'Black Book of Communism' (scroll down and read 'The Ukrainian famine')
* Fraud Famine & Fascism by Douglas Tottle, International Publishers (Can be purchased from the Communist Party of Canada, 190A Danforth Ave.)

==Symposia about Holodomor denial==

In November 2007, an International Conference entitled ''The Ukrainian Holodomor and the Denial of Genocides'' was organized by the [[Guarini Institute]], and held at [[John Cabot University]], in [[Italy]]. The Ukrainian Ambassador, [[Heorhiy Cheriavskyi]], addressed the conference and spoke about the importance of international education and recognition of the Ukrainian Holodomor. [[Federigo Argentieri]], from the Guarini Institute, read the paper: “''Ideology and Diplomacy: How the Ukrainian Famine Was—and Still is—Denied''.” In his presentation, Argentieri introduced the history of denial of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33. Conflicting reports on the events in 1933 highlighted the willingness of the [[great power|Great Powers]] to ignore the plain facts witnessed by British government officials in the Soviet Union. At the time, political and economic interests took precedence over internal human rights matters. Argentieri noted that today, the famine remains virtually ignored, even in academic circles in the West.<ref>[http://intranet.johncabot.edu/myjcu/public_site/news.aspx?cat=News "The Ukranian Holodomor and the Denial of Genocides"]</ref>

==Holodomor denial and Ukrainian law==

On [[November 28]] [[2006]], Ukraine's parliament, the [[Verkhovna Rada]], passed a law recognizing the 1932–1933 Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. The voting figures were as follows: supporting the bill were [[BYuT]]—118 deputies, [[NSNU]]—79 deputies, [[Socialist Party of Ukraine|Socialists]]—30 deputies, 4 independent deputies, and the [[Party of Regions]]—2 deputies (200 deputies did not cast a vote). The [[Communist Party of Ukraine]] voted against the bill. In all, 233 deputies supported the bill—a minimum of 226 votes were required for it to be passed.<ref>[http://www.day.kiev.ua/179841/ "Holodomor and Holocaust denial to be a criminal offense"], [[3 April]] [[2007]]</ref><ref>[http://www.lucorg.com/luc/news.php?id=2241 "What the Verkhovna Rada actually passed"], [[February 28]], [[2007]]</ref>

A draft law "On Amendments to the Criminal and the Procedural Criminal Codes of Ukraine" was submitted by [[President of Ukraine|President]] [[Viktor Yushchenko]] for consideration by the [[Verkhovna Rada|Ukrainian Parliament]]. The draft law envisages prosecution for public denial of the Holodomor Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine as a fact of genocide of the Ukrainian people, and of [[the Holocaust]] as the fact of genocide of the [[Jew]]ish people. The draft law foresees that public denial as well as production and dissemination of materials denying the above shall be punished by a fine of 100 to 300 untaxed minimum salaries, or imprisonment of up to two years.<ref>[http://www.nrcu.gov.ua/index.php?id=148&listid=56782 "Public denial of Holodomor Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as genocide of Ukrainian people to be prosecuted"], [[December 12]], [[2007]]</ref>

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Sources==
*Andreopoulos, George J., Ed. ''Genocide: conceptual and historical dimensions'', Philadelphia: [[University of Pennsylvania Press]], 1994. ISBN 0812232496
*Colorosa, Barbara, ''Extraordinary evil: a brief history of genocide'', New York: Penguin Group, 2007. ISBN 0670066044
*Conquest, Robert, ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7
*Conquest, Robert, ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company, 2004. ISBN 0-393-05933-2
*New Internationalist. Justice After Genocide. December (385). 2005.
*Paris, Erna. ''Long shadows: truth, lies, and history'', New York: [[Bloomsbury Publishing|Bloomsbury]], 2001. ISBN 1582342105
*Springer, Jane, ''Genocide'', Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2006. ISBN 0888996810
*Tauger, Mark B., [http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2500600 ''The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933''], [[Slavic Review]], Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 70-89
*[[James Waller|Waller, James]], ''Becoming evil: how ordinary people commit genocide and mass killing'', Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]], 2002. ISBN 0195148681
*Crowl, James William, ''Angels in Stalin's Paradise. Western Reporters in Soviet Russia, 1917 to 1937. A case study of Louis Fisher and Walter Duranty'', [[University Press of America]], 1982. ISBN 0819121851
*Taylor, Sally J., ''Stalin's apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Times's man in Moscow'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN 0195057007

==Video resources==
* Harvest of Despair. (1983), produced by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Center.

[[Category:Ukraine]]
[[Category:Genocide]]

Holodomor denial

2008-02-25T12:29:47Z

Bandurist:

'''Holodomor Denial ''' is the act of stating that the [[Holodomor]], the disastrous famine of 1932-1933 in Eastern Ukraine (then known as the [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic]], in the [[Soviet Union]]), never took place.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2002/280214.shtml Famine denial The Ukrainian Weekly, July 14, 2002, No. 28, Vol. LXX]</ref><ref>''

Initially he Soviet government dismissed all references to the famine as anti-Soviet propaganda. Denial of the famine declined after the Communist Party lost power and the Soviet empire disintegrated'' @ [http://books.google.com/books?ei=_WZ3R9CwDZnmtQO3xeXQCg&id=c-8YAAAAIAAJ&dq=Holodomor+Denial&q=%22Denial+of+the+famine%22&pgis=1#search Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity By Dinah Shelton; Page 1055] ISBN 0028658485</ref><ref>After over half a century of denial, in January 1990 the [[Communist Party of Ukraine]] adopted a special resolution admitting that the Ukrainian Famine had indeed occurred. [http://books.google.com/books?id=5Ef8Hrx8Cd0C&pg Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts - Page 93] ISBN 0415944295</ref>

The Holodomor was denied immediately and repeatedly by Soviet authorities (starting with President [[Mikhail Kalinin]] and Foreign Minister [[Maxim Litvinov]]), and this denial continued unabated, well into the 1980s.<ref name="Conquest">[[Robert Conquest]], ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine'' [[Oxford University Press]] (1987), ISBN 0195051807, p. 308. [http://books.google.com/books?id=Bp31GmfH-6YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=harvest+of+sorrow&sig=ONivvVYlMPCPY0pb41NXw-AL8dE#PPA320,M1]</ref>

The Soviet stance was supported by Soviet-friendly journalists from the [[Western world|West]], such as [[Walter Duranty]] and [[Louis Fischer]]. Today, Holodomor denial continues the field of leftist fringe writers, and not supported by any serious academic scholars.

In November 2006, the [[Verkhovna Rada|Ukrainian Parliament]] passed a bill branding the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.<ref>Jan Maksymiuk, [http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/11/03ac02a4-6e3a-481b-8932-fafd4c13abab.html "Ukraine: Parliament Recognizes Soviet-Era Famine As Genocide"], ''[[Radio Free Europe|RFE/RL]]'', [[November 29]], [[2006]]</ref> In November 2007, the [[government of Ukraine]] tabled a law which would make public statements of both Holodomor and [[Holocaust denial]] illegal acts in Ukraine.

==Soviet Union==
===Cover-up during the famine===

The Soviet leadership undertook extensive efforts to prevent the spread of any information about the Holodomor. State communications about the famine were kept a [[top secret]]. [[Joseph Stalin]] and [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] sent a telegram to the party and provincial police chiefs requiring that Ukrainian peasants going north to [[Russia]] to seek bread were to be stopped.<ref>[[Robert Conquest]] ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company (2004), ISBN 0-393-05933-2, page 102.</ref> The telegram blamed the influx of peasants on [[Poland|Polish]] agents, who allegedly wanted to start a famine scare. [[State Political Directorate|OGPU]] chairman [[Genrikh Yagoda]] reported that over two hundred thousands peasants had been sent back. The secret correspondence included a letter sent by a party official from [[Dnipropetrovsk]] where he warned that "there will be no one left" alive to sow and ensure grain production, unless some amount of grain will not be taken. Molotov replied that the needs of the state, as "defined in party resolutions", are more important than the lives of people.<ref>[[Robert Conquest]] ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company (2004), ISBN 0-393-05933-2, page 102.</ref>

Various acts were committed to conceal the true number of dead people. Out of 9,472 only 3,997 corpses were registered in the Kyiv Medical Inspectorate. Similar cover-ups took place everywhere.<ref name="reflections"/>

===Early years===

While the famine was taking place, [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] authorities denied its existence. It was a criminal offense to mention the famine, punishable with a five-year term in the [[Gulag]] [[labor camp]]s; placing the blame on the authorities led to a death sentence.<ref name="reflections">[[Robert Conquest]] ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, p. 96</ref>

As a result the population growth failed to meet the expected targets set by the Communist party. When this became evident from the population statistics data, three successive heads of the [[Goskomstat|Soviet Central Statistical Administration]] were executed, while others were arrested.<ref>Lisa Shymko, [http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12306 "The Politics of Genocide"], ''[[The American Spectator]]'', [[November 14]] [[2007]]</ref>

The [[Soviet Census (1937)|1937 Soviet Census]] was thought to be exemplary due to its apparent thoroughness and near-perfect organization. Government officials in charge of the census received state awards immediately upon the census conclusion. When it became apparent that the final population figures were significantly lower than expected, the results were classified and the census organizers were repressed. The new [[Soviet Census (1939)|1939 census]] was organized in such a way as to have certainly inflated data on population numbers. It showed a population figure of 170.6 million people, manipulated so as to match the numbers stated by [[Joseph Stalin]] in his report to the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party. No other censuses were conducted until 1959.

=== Official Holodomor denial by Soviet officials ===

Soviet President [[Mikhail Kalinin]] responded to Western offers of food by telling of “political cheats who offer to help the starving Ukraine,” and commented that, “only the most decadent classes are capable of producing such cynical elements."<ref>[http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3513136.html How Liberals Funked It]</ref><ref name="reflections"/>

In an interview with [[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones]] in March 1933, Soviet Foreign Minister [[Maxim Litvinov]] stated, “Well, there is no famine", and went on to say, "You must take a longer view. The present hunger is temporary. In writing books you must have a longer view. It would be difficult to describe it as hunger.”<ref name="Jones-Litvinov">[[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones]], [http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/st_patricks/litvinov_famine_denia_oldl.htm Interview with Maxim Litvinov], March 1933</ref>

On instructions from Litvinov, Boris Skvirsky, embassy counselor of the recently opened Soviet Embassy in the [[United States]], published a letter on [[January 3]], [[1934]], in response to a pamphlet about the Holodomor.<ref name="Carynnyk">Marco Carynnyk, [http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1983/398325.shtml "The New York Times and the Great Famine"], ''The Ukrainian Weekly'', [[September 25]], [[1983]], No. 39, Vol. LI</ref> In his letter, Skvirsky stated that the idea that the Soviet government was "deliberately killing the population of the Ukraine" "wholly grotesque." He claimed that the Ukrainian population was increasing at an annual rate of 2 percent during the preceding five years. He asserted that the death rate in Ukraine "was the lowest of that of any of the constituent republics composing the Soviet Union," concluding that it "was about 35 percent lower than the pre-war death rate of [[Russian Empire|tsarist]] days."<ref name="Mace">James E. Mace, [http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml "Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine"] (paper delivered at a conference on "Recognition and Denial of Genocide and Mass Killing in the 20th Century", held in [[New York City]] on [[November 13]], [[1987]]), ''[[The Ukrainian Weekly]]'', [[January 10]], [[1988]], No. 2, Vol. LVI</ref>

===The early 1980s===

In 1983 for the first time, Holodomor remembrance was co-ordinated by the Ukrainian community world wide. The [[Ukrainian diaspora]] exerted pressure on the media and various governments, including the governments of the [[United States]] and [[Canada]], to raise the issue of the Holodomor with the government of the Soviet Union. The United States created a Commission into the famine. The Soviet authorities predicted this commission would place the Soviet state responsible for the act.<ref name="symp">[http://www.cym.org/au/archives/Holodomor.pdf The Great Famine of 1932-33 - A Symposium], [[22 October]], [[2003]], pp.4-5</ref>

In an attempt to counter this, the [[Soviet government]] admitted that some peasantry died to climatic conditions mainly [[drought]].

===Glasnost and the late 1980s===

The future [[President of Ukraine]], [[Leonid Kravchuk]], was charged in 1983 with finding rainfall evidence for the 1930s famine. However, Kravchuk's inquiry into the rainfalls for the 1933-1932 period found that they were within normal parameters.<ref name="Bandera">Stephen Bandera, [http://www.homin.ca/news_view.php?category=top&news=1016&lang=en "Holodomor as a source of national unity"], ''Ukrainian Echo'', [[February 5]], [[2007]]</ref>

It was only during the late 1980s that the Soviet Government admitted that its agricultural policies played a direct role in the causing Holodomor. Ultimately, as President of Ukraine, Kravchuk would admit to the cover-up attempts, and support in recognizing the Holodomor as genocide.<ref name="Bandera"/>

==Contemporary denial outside of the USSR==

===Walter Duranty and ''The New York Times''===

One of the first Western Holodomor deniers was [[Walter Duranty]]. Duranty was the winner of the 1932 [[Pulitzer prize]] in journalism in the category of correspondence, for his dispatches on [[Russia]] and the working out of the [[Five-Year Plan (USSR)|Five Year Plan]].<ref>[http://duranty.pelech.org/duranty2003/pulitzer2003.pdf "Correspondence between Markian Pelech and the Board of the Pulitzer Prizes regarding Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize"] ([[December 30]], [[2002]]–[[April 28]], [[2003]])</ref> While the famine was raging, he wrote in the pages of ''[[The New York Times]]'' that "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda," and that "There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."<ref>[[Arnold Beichman]], [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/791vwuaz.asp ''Pulitzer-Winning Lies''], ''[[The Weekly Standard]]'', [[June 12]] [[2003]]</ref>

In his reports, Duranty downplayed the impact of food shortages in Ukraine. In private however, he told [[Eugene Lyons]] and reported to the [[United Kingdom|British]] Embassy that at least seven million had died of famine <ref> Embassy dispatch dated [[30 September]] [[1933]] included the following: "According to Mr. Duranty the population of [[North Caucasus]] and the Lower [[Volga River|Volga]] had decreased in the past year by three million, and the population of Ukraine by four to five million" (cited from ''"Reflections on the ravaged century"'', p. 123)</ref>. Duranty acted more like a spokesman for the Soviet government than an independent reporter for a Western newspaper. As Duranty wrote in a dispatch from Moscow in March 1933, "Conditions are bad, but there is no famine... But—to put it brutally—you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."<ref name="NYT">[http://www.nytco.com/company/awards/statement.html "New York Times Statement About 1932 Pulitzer Prize Awarded to Walter Duranty"]</ref>

Duranty wrote articles denying the fact that the Holodomor was taking place in Ukraine. He also wrote denunciations of those who wrote about the famine, accusing them of being reactionaries and [[anti-communism|anti-Bolshevik]] [[propaganda|propagandists]]. Duranty continued to repeat Soviet disinformation without verifying its veracity. As the ''New York Times'' notes: "Taking Soviet propaganda at face value this way was completely misleading, as talking with ordinary Russians might have revealed even at the time."<ref name="NYT"/>

In August 1933, [[Theodor Cardinal Innitzer]] of [[Vienna]] called for relief efforts, stating that the Ukrainian famine was claiming lives “likely. . . numbered. . . by the millions” and driving those still alive to [[infanticide]] and [[cannibalism]]. ''The New York Times'', [[August 20]], [[1933]], reported Innitzer’s charge and published an official denial: “in the Soviet Union we have neither [[cannibalism|cannibals]] nor [[cardinal (Catholicism)|cardinals]]”. The next day, the Times added Duranty’s own denial.

[[United Kingdom|British]] journalist [[Malcolm Muggeridge]] characterized Duranty as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism."<ref>[[Robert Conquest]]. ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine'' [[Oxford University Press]] (1987), ISBN 0195051807, page 320. [http://books.google.com/books?id=Bp31GmfH-6YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=harvest+of+sorrow&sig=ONivvVYlMPCPY0pb41NXw-AL8dE#PPA320,M1]</ref>

Campaigns were launched in 1986 for the retraction of the Pulitzer Prize given to ''[[The New York Times]]''. Despite the fact that the [[Times]] admits that the fraudulent coverage led to it receiving the prize, they have refused to relinquish it.<ref>[http://duranty.pelech.org/duranty2003/pulitzer2003.pdf Correspondence between Markian Pelech and the Board of Pulitzer Prizes]</ref> The Times acknowledges that "some of Duranty's editors criticized his reporting as tendentious", and that "collectivization was the main cause of a famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine, the Soviet [[breadbasket]], in 1932 and 1933 - two years after Duranty won his prize."<ref name="NYT"/>

===Louis Fischer and ''The Nation''===

[[Louis Fischer]], an American reporter who glossed over Soviet reality had a deep ideological commitment to [[communism]] dating back to 1920. Fischer traveled to Ukraine in October and November of 1932, for ''[[The Nation]]'', and was initially alarmed at what he saw. "In the [[Poltava]], [[Vinnitsa]], [[Podolsk]] and [[Kiev]] regions, conditions will be hard," he wrote, "I think there is no starvation anywhere in Ukraine now — after all they have just gathered in the harvest but it was a bad harvest."

Initially critical of the Soviet grain procurement program because it created food problem, Fischer adopted the official Soviet government view, which blamed the problem on Ukrainian [[counter-revolutionary]] [[Nationalism|nationalist]] "[[Wrecking (Soviet crime)|wreckers]]." It seemed "whole villages" had been "contaminated" by such men, who were deported to "lumbering camps and mining areas in distant agricultural areas which are now just entering upon their pioneering stage." These steps were forced upon the [[Kremlin]], Fischer wrote, but the Soviets were, nevertheless, learning how to rule wisely.

Fischer was on a lecture tour in the United States when [[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones']] famine story broke. Speaking to a college audience in [[Oakland, California]], a week later, Fischer stated emphatically: "There is no starvation in [[Russia]]." He spent the spring of 1933 campaigning for American diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union. As rumors of a famine in the USSR reached American shores, Fischer continued to vociferously deny the reports.

Fischer's article entitled "Russia's Last Hard Year," stated, "The first half of 1933 was very difficult indeed. Many people simply did not have sufficient nourishment." Fischer blamed poor weather and the refusal of peasants to harvest the grain, which then rotted in the fields. Government requisitions drained the countryside of food, he admitted, but military needs (a potential conflict with [[Japan]]) explained the need for such deadly thoroughness in grain collections.<ref name="fischer">[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/westobservs.htm Louis Fisher], at ArtUkraine.com</ref>

Fischer maintained his general optimism about the Soviet Union through the publication of his ''Soviet Journey'' in 1935. The book devoted three pages to a discussion of the famine of 1932-1933, where he wrote of food left rotting in the fields as the result of peasants' "passive resistance." Fischer once again blamed the peasants directly for having "brought the calamity upon themselves" and stressed the positive results ensuing from Bolshevik victory in the countryside, and connected the famine to peasant action (or inaction).<ref name="fischer"/>

===Communist Party of the USA ===

The Ukrainian American community upon receiving reports of the Famine in November and December 1933 organized marches in a number of U.S. cities to protest against American recognition of a government which was starving millions of Ukrainians.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref name="sulz">[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref> [[Communist Party USA|American Communists]] resorted to violence in an attempt to silence the Ukrainians.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref><ref>[http://www.shevchenko.org/famine/21_27.htm Dushnyck, Walter. 50 Years Ago: The Famine Holocaust in Ukraine: Terror and Human Misery as Instruments of Russian Imperialism]</ref> On [[November 18]], [[1933]], in [[New York City]], 8,000 Ukrainians marched from [[Washington Square Park, New York|Washington Square Park]] to 67th Street, while 500 Communists ran beside the parade and snatched the Ukrainians' handbills, spat on the marchers and tried to hit them.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref> Five persons were injured.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref> Only the presence of 300 policemen on foot and a score on horseback leading the parade and riding along its flanks prevented serious trouble.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref name="sulz">

In [[Chicago]], on [[December 17]], [[1933]], several hundred Communists mounted a massed attack on the vanguard of 5,000 Ukrainian American marchers, leaving over 100 injured in what ''The New York Times'' called "the worst riot in years":

"Brick, clubs, rotten eggs and other missiles rained on the marchers from the Hermitage Avenue elevated station bridging Madison Street. The street fight which followed saw brass knuckles, blackjacks, fists and rifle butts used until a dozen squads of police restored order."<ref name="Mace"/>

=== Holodomor denial by Foreign Dignitaries visiting the USSR ===

Prominent dignitaries who visited the Soviet Union in 1934, such as [[George Bernard Shaw]] and [[H. G. Wells]], are also on record as denying the existence of the Famine in Ukraine<ref>[http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/communism/com107.html Stalin-Wells talk / the verbatim record and a discussion by G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, J.M. Keynes, E. Toller and others]</ref>.

In 1934 the British Foreign Office in the House of Lords stated that there was no evidence to support the allegations against the Soviet government regarding the Famine in Ukraine. The testimony of Sir John Maynard, a renowned famine expert who visited the Ukraine in the summer of 1933 rejected tales of famine-genocide propagated by the Ukrainians<ref>[http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/ukrainian.html The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth]</ref>.

The height of manipulation was reached during a visit to Ukraine carried out between [[August 26]] and [[September 9]], [[1933]], by [[Prime Minister of France|French Prime Minister]] [[Edouard Herriot]], who denied accounts of the famine. The day before his arrival, all beggars, homeless children and starving people were removed from the streets. Shop windows in local stores were filled with food, but purchases were forbidden, and anyone coming too close to the stores was arrested. The streets were washed. Just like all other [[Western World|Western]] visitors, Herriot met fake "peasants," all selected Communists or Komsomol members, who showed him healthy cattle.<ref>''Reflections'', p. 122</ref> Herriot declared to the press that there was no famine in Ukraine, that he did not see any trace of it, and that this showed adversaries of the Soviet Union were spreading the rumor. "When one believes that the Ukraine is devastated by famine, allow me to shrug my shoulders," he declared. The [[September 13]] [[1933]] issue of ''[[Pravda]]'' was able to write that Herriot "categorically contradicted the lies of the bourgeoisie press in connection with a famine in the
USSR."<ref>[http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/ukraine2005/Etienne%20Thevein%20%20English%20translation.pdf "France, Germany and Austria Facing the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine"]</ref>.

The lack of knowledge of this genocide was observed by English writer [[George Orwell]], who commented that "''huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of [[England|English]] [[Russophiles]]"''.<ref>George Orwell, "''Notes on Nationalism''" in "The ''Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell''" ([[London]], 1968), Vol. 3, p. 370.</ref>

Orwell clearly knew of a press cover-up about the famine as in his 1945, Proposed Preface to Animal Farm he wrote:
“…it was considered equally proper to publicize famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.”<ref>[http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/farmer_jones-%20reorder.htm Was Gareth Jones's surname behind George Orwell’s naming of ‘Farmer Jones' in Animal Farm?.]</ref> For an interesting 'work-in-progress' including a discussion on the influence of the Ukrainian Famine and Holodomor denial by Duranty on Orwell's book "Animal Farm" see Nigel Colley's article [http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/farmer_jones-%20reorder.htm Was Gareth Jones's surname behind George Orwell’s naming of ‘Farmer Jones' in Animal Farm?].

==Modern denial==
===The 50th Anniversary===

The rallying and lobbying of the Ukrainian Diaspora Community around the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor became a concern for the governing body of the Soviet Union.<ref name="symp"/> In February 1983, the [[Politburo]] of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] (CPSU) activated its counter-[[propaganda]] section to focus on the Ukrainian famine. The head of the directorate for relations with foreign countries for the CPSU, A. Merkulov, was given the task of directing [[disinformation]] to the West and contacted [[Leonid Kravchuk]], the chief idealog for the Communist Party in Ukraine. The materials were to be sent to the [[RIA Novosti|Novosti Press]] (APN) centers in the [[United States]] and [[Canada]] to demonstrate the "antidemocratic base of the Ukrainian bourgeois Nationalists, the collaboration of the [[Stepan Bandera|Banderovtsev]] and the [[Adolf Hitler|Hitlerite]] Fascists during the [[World War II|Second World War]]."<ref>ЦГАООУ. Ф.1. Оп. 25 Д. 2719. Л.27-28. Подлинник.</ref>

In preparation for the expected rise in activity associated with the 55th anniversary, the Soviet Union launched a campaign of disinformation. In [[Canada]], the [[Association of United Ukrainian Canadians]] (a pro-Communist Labor temple (Hall) movement in the Ukrainian community) published numerous articles denying the Holodomor in Ukraine in its English and Ukrainian language magazines and newspapers. Through its chain of bookstore outlets, it distributed pamphlets and materials whose point supplied to them from the counter-propaganda section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 2007, correspondence and instructions from Soviet sources such as the [[Ukraina Society]] to the organization regarding the Holodomor have been made available for study by scholars.

In an open letter to [[Mikhail Gorbachov]] in August 1987, veteran dissident [[Viacheslav Chornovil]] wrote about the denial of the Holodomor by the Communist Party of the USSR, and also Western denial.<ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/historical/sovcrimes.htm "Soviet crimes remain unpunished"]</ref>
<blockquote>
"The biggest and most infamous blank spot in the Soviet history of Ukraine is the hollow silence for over 50 years about the genocide of the Ukrainian nation organized by Stalin and his henchmen ... The Great Famine of 1932-33, which took millions of human lives. In one year - 1933 - my people lost more than throughout all of World War II, which ravaged our land."
</blockquote>

===Douglas Tottle and Holodomor denial ===

In 1987 the Canadian trade-unionist and activist [[Douglas Tottle]], published the controversial book ''Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: the Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard'', where he claimed that the Holodomor was "fraudulent", and "a creation of [[Nazism|Nazi]] propagandists".<ref name="tottle">Douglas Tottle, [http://www.rationalrevolution.net/special/library/famine.htm/ "Fraud, famine, and fascism: the Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard"], Toronto: Progress Books, 1987. ISBN 0919396518</ref> By the author's own account, his book is only carried by 28 libraries around the world. His book, published by the Communist ''Progress Publishers'' in [[Toronto]], appeared practically at the same time Ukrainian Communist party leader [[Volodymyr Shcherbytsky]] publicly acknowledged the Holodomor, in December 1987, and the book was subsequently withdrawn from circulation.<ref>[http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-September/021722.html link Letter from David R. Marples]</ref> Only the first two chapters of the book deal with the Famine in Ukraine. The rest is written to discredit the work done by western Scholars, to associate the Ukrainian diaspora in the West with Fascism, and to discredit the US support of Holodomore research. Nevertheless, the book is available on the internet, and continues to be cited as an "invaluable" and "important" book by groups such as the [[Stalin Society]] in [[Great Britain]], author [[Jeff Coplon]], and others.

In a review of Tottle's book in the ''[[Ukrainian Canadian Magazine]]'', published by the pro-Communist Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, [[Wilfred Szczesny]] wrote: "Members of the general public who want to know about the famine, its extent and causes, and about the motives and techniques of those who would make this tragedy into something other than what it was will find Tottle's work invaluable" (''The Ukrainian Canadian'', April 1988, p. 24).<ref name="Szcz">[http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/serbyn/ "The last stand of the Ukrainian famine-genocide deniers"]</ref>

In his book, ''Searching for place'', Lubomyr Luciuk comments: "For a particularly base example of famine-denial literature, see Tottle, ''Fraud, famine, and fascism...''".<ref>Lubomyr Luciuk, ''Searching for place: Ukrainian displaced persons, Canada, and the migration of memory'', Toronto: [[University of Toronto Press]], 2000, p. 413. ISBN 0802042457</ref> Professor [[Roman Serbyn]] a professor of history at the University of Quebec at Montreal has published an analysis and review of Tottles book which is available [http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/serbyn/ here].

===Jeff Coplon===

Tottle's book inspired a number of articles by other Holodomor deniers, such as [[Jeff Coplon]]'s article ''"In Search of a Soviet Holocaust"''.<ref name="coplon">Jeff Coplon, [http://www.chss.montclair.edu/English/furr/vv.html "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust"], ''[[The Village Voice]]'', [[January 12]], [[1988]].</ref> This article not only denies the Holodomor, but also tries to associate those who continued to bring the Holodomor to the attention of the public with the [[Nazism|Nazis]], even giving quotes from [[Adolf Hitler]]'s ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' to stress this point.
<blockquote>
"Just as the Nazis used the OUN for their own ends, so has [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] exploited the famine, from his purple-prosed commemoration of "this callous act" to his backing of the Mace commission. ... But if people could be convinced that Communism is worse than fascism; that [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] was an insane monster, even worse than Hitler; that the seven million died in more unspeakable agony than the six million ... One cannot appease an [[Evil empire|Evil Empire]], after all.<ref name="conlon" />
</blockquote>
Coplon also penned the article ''"Rewriting History - How Ukrainian nationalists imposed their doctored history on High School Students"'' heavily relying on Tottle's publication with his additional comments regarding the inclusion the Holodomor as one of a number of subjects included in the curriculum for social studies classes in New York. In the article published in the magazine "CAPITAL Region" March 1988, he wrote: <blockquote>
''"The losers, of course, are the New York state schoolchildren, who will absorb this disinformation between algebra and chemistry - and may even be asked to parrot the fraud for a higher score on their regents exam."''
<ref>[http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/essays/coplonrewriting88.pdf Rewriting History - How Ukrainian nationalists imposed their doctored history on High School Students]</ref>
</blockquote>

Other similar writings include an article by [[Wilfred Szczesny]] ("Fraud, Famine and Fascism", ''The Ukrainian Canadian'', April 1988); an unsigned article ("The Ukrainian Famine: Fact or Fiction"), which appeared in the ''[[McGill Daily]]'', [[November 22]], [[1988]],<ref name="Szcz" /> and Challenge-Desafio's ("The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33"),<ref>[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33]</ref> which appeared in a newspaper of the [[Progressive Labor Party (United States)|Progressive Labor Party]] in 1987.<ref>[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html "The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33"], ''Challenge-Desafio'', [[February 25]], [[1987]].</ref>

===Stephan Merl===

In 1989, [[Stephan Merl]] (a professor at [[Bielefeld University]]) published "Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot von 1932-1933 zur Auslöschung des ukrainischen Nationalismus?".<ref>Stephan Merl, "Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot von 1932-1933 zur Auslöschung des ukrainischen Nationalismus?", ''Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas'' 37 (1989), vol. 4, p. 569-590</ref> This publication, once again relying heavily on Tottle, describes the work of [[James Mace]] and [[Robert Conquest]] as part of a campaign by Ukrainian nationalists to discredit the Soviet Union and pillory liberal journalists like Walter Duranty.<ref>[http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-September/021722.html Letters of David Marples]</ref>

===Mario Sousa===

In 1998 [[Mario Sousa]] published "''Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union''"[http://www.mariosousa.se/LiesconcerningthehistoryoftheSovietUnion.html Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union].

Sousa's arguments against the Holodomor are based on his interpretation that the early Holodomor campaign was started by the Nazi's and was later taken up and funded by Ukrainian refugees who he states were Nazi collaborators. Sousa continues that Holodomor scholarship was later supported by the CIA during the [[Cold War]] specifically aimed at slandering and discrediting the Soviet government.

===The Stalin Society===

Holodomor denial continues into the 21st century with the publication of "''The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth''", a pamphlet penned by prominent British physician [[John Puntis]] and published in July 2002 by the [[Stalin Society]]. The Stalin Society itself has been described as "''tiny, aging and schism-ridden''"<ref>[http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article120991.ece "Stalin apologists drink to the memory of Uncle Joe"], ''[[The Independent]]'', [[2 March]] [[2003]]</ref>. Once again heavily relying on Tottle, facts are reinterpreted with sources questioned, numbers questioned and the whole history of the famine made to look like the continuation of the Cold War<ref>[http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/ukrainian.html#After The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth]</ref>.

==Holodomor denial in University courses==

In 2004 Toronto University offered a history course on "The Soviet Union and the Stalin Question" by M. Rodsky. Rather than starting from a neutral point of view, Rodsky took a revisionist version of Stalin and the history of the Soviet Union. In his third lecture in the series he approached "The Famine in Ukraine: What is the Truth?". The reading list consisted exclusively of materials that denied the existence of the Holodomor<ref>[http://individual.utoronto.ca/mrodden/study/ssustudy.html The Soviet Union and the Stalin Question]</ref>.

* In Search of a SOVIET HOLOCAUST (short reading)[http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/vv.html Here]
* The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33 (longer reading)[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html here]
* Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union by Mario Sousa (scroll down and read 'The myth concerning the famine in the Ukraine')
* Maoist Internationalist Movement's Review of the [http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/bookstore/commie.html The Black Book of Communism]'Black Book of Communism' (scroll down and read 'The Ukrainian famine')
* Fraud Famine & Fascism by Douglas Tottle, International Publishers (Can be purchased from the Communist Party of Canada, 190A Danforth Ave.)

==Symposia about Holodomor denial==

In November 2007, an International Conference entitled ''The Ukrainian Holodomor and the Denial of Genocides'' was organized by the [[Guarini Institute]], and held at [[John Cabot University]], in [[Italy]]. The Ukrainian Ambassador, [[Heorhiy Cheriavskyi]], addressed the conference and spoke about the importance of international education and recognition of the Ukrainian Holodomor. [[Federigo Argentieri]], from the Guarini Institute, read the paper: “''Ideology and Diplomacy: How the Ukrainian Famine Was—and Still is—Denied''.” In his presentation, Argentieri introduced the history of denial of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33. Conflicting reports on the events in 1933 highlighted the willingness of the [[great power|Great Powers]] to ignore the plain facts witnessed by British government officials in the Soviet Union. At the time, political and economic interests took precedence over internal human rights matters. Argentieri noted that today, the famine remains virtually ignored, even in academic circles in the West.<ref>[http://intranet.johncabot.edu/myjcu/public_site/news.aspx?cat=News "The Ukranian Holodomor and the Denial of Genocides"]</ref>

==Holodomor denial and Ukrainian law==

On [[November 28]] [[2006]], Ukraine's parliament, the [[Verkhovna Rada]], passed a law recognizing the 1932–1933 Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. The voting figures were as follows: supporting the bill were [[BYuT]]—118 deputies, [[NSNU]]—79 deputies, [[Socialist Party of Ukraine|Socialists]]—30 deputies, 4 independent deputies, and the [[Party of Regions]]—2 deputies (200 deputies did not cast a vote). The [[Communist Party of Ukraine]] voted against the bill. In all, 233 deputies supported the bill—a minimum of 226 votes were required for it to be passed.<ref>[http://www.day.kiev.ua/179841/ "Holodomor and Holocaust denial to be a criminal offense"], [[3 April]] [[2007]]</ref><ref>[http://www.lucorg.com/luc/news.php?id=2241 "What the Verkhovna Rada actually passed"], [[February 28]], [[2007]]</ref>

A draft law "On Amendments to the Criminal and the Procedural Criminal Codes of Ukraine" was submitted by [[President of Ukraine|President]] [[Viktor Yushchenko]] for consideration by the [[Verkhovna Rada|Ukrainian Parliament]]. The draft law envisages prosecution for public denial of the Holodomor Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine as a fact of genocide of the Ukrainian people, and of [[the Holocaust]] as the fact of genocide of the [[Jew]]ish people. The draft law foresees that public denial as well as production and dissemination of materials denying the above shall be punished by a fine of 100 to 300 untaxed minimum salaries, or imprisonment of up to two years.<ref>[http://www.nrcu.gov.ua/index.php?id=148&listid=56782 "Public denial of Holodomor Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as genocide of Ukrainian people to be prosecuted"], [[December 12]], [[2007]]</ref>

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Sources==
*Andreopoulos, George J., Ed. ''Genocide: conceptual and historical dimensions'', Philadelphia: [[University of Pennsylvania Press]], 1994. ISBN 0812232496
*Colorosa, Barbara, ''Extraordinary evil: a brief history of genocide'', New York: Penguin Group, 2007. ISBN 0670066044
*Conquest, Robert, ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7
*Conquest, Robert, ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company, 2004. ISBN 0-393-05933-2
*New Internationalist. Justice After Genocide. December (385). 2005.
*Paris, Erna. ''Long shadows: truth, lies, and history'', New York: [[Bloomsbury Publishing|Bloomsbury]], 2001. ISBN 1582342105
*Springer, Jane, ''Genocide'', Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2006. ISBN 0888996810
*Tauger, Mark B., [http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2500600 ''The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933''], [[Slavic Review]], Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 70-89
*[[James Waller|Waller, James]], ''Becoming evil: how ordinary people commit genocide and mass killing'', Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]], 2002. ISBN 0195148681
*Crowl, James William, ''Angels in Stalin's Paradise. Western Reporters in Soviet Russia, 1917 to 1937. A case study of Louis Fisher and Walter Duranty'', [[University Press of America]], 1982. ISBN 0819121851
*Taylor, Sally J., ''Stalin's apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Times's man in Moscow'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN 0195057007

==Video resources==
* Harvest of Despair. (1983), produced by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Center.

[[Category:Ukraine]]
[[Category:Genocide]]

Bandura

2008-02-24T13:58:20Z

Bandurist: /* Types */

Bandura - a multi-stringed Ukrainian folk instrument.

The bandura can trace it's origins back to a [[lute]]-like predecessor. The first use of the term bandura in Polish written chronicles dates back to 1441. The bandura became the favourite instrument of the [[Ukrainian Cossacks]]. After the destruction of the [[Zaporozhian Sich]] the instrument cotinued to be played by blind itinerant musicians known as [[kobzari]]. In the 20th century the instrument began to be used widely throughout Ukraine. Bandura ensembles and conservatory courses were established.

==Types==
A number of different types of banduras exist.
* 1) '''The Folk bandura''' having some 20 strings and wooden pegs and tuned to a diatonic tuning.
* 2) '''The Kyiv style bandura''' was developed in the 1930's and was serially manufactured by the Chernihiv or Lviv musical instruments factory. Standard instruments have some 55-58 strings tuned chromatically. Concert instruments have a register mechanism in the side and have 61-65 strings.
* 3) '''The Kharkiv style bandura''' was developed in th 1920's and was refined by bandura makers Peter Honcharenko and Bill Vetzal. This instrument allows the use of both hands over the full range of the instrument. Various types exist. Diatonic instruments with 34-36 strings , semi-chromatic with 58 strings a fully cromatic instruments with 68 strings.

==References==
==Sources==

Bandura

2008-02-24T13:57:39Z

Bandurist:

Bandura - a multi-stringed Ukrainian folk instrument.

The bandura can trace it's origins back to a [[lute]]-like predecessor. The first use of the term bandura in Polish written chronicles dates back to 1441. The bandura became the favourite instrument of the [[Ukrainian Cossacks]]. After the destruction of the [[Zaporozhian Sich]] the instrument cotinued to be played by blind itinerant musicians known as [[kobzari]]. In the 20th century the instrument began to be used widely throughout Ukraine. Bandura ensembles and conservatory courses were established.

==Types==
A number of different types of banduras exist.
* 1) Folk bandura having some 20 strings and wooden pegs and tuned to a diatonic tuning.
* 2) The Kyiv style bandura was developed in the 1930's and was serially manufactured by the Chernihiv or Lviv musical instruments factory. Standard instruments have some 55-58 strings tuned chromatically. Concert instruments have a register mechanism in the side and have 61-65 strings.
* 3) The Kharkiv style bandura was developed in th 1920's and was refined by bandura makers Peter Honcharenko and Bill Vetzal. This instrument allows the use of both hands over the full range of the instrument. Various types exist. Diatonic instruments with 34-36 strings , semi-chromatic with 58 strings a fully cromatic instruments with 68 strings.

==References==
==Sources==

Bandura

2008-02-24T13:50:12Z

Bandurist: New page: Bandura - a multi-stringed Ukrainian folk instrument. The bandura can trace it's origins back to a lute-like predecessor. The first use of the term bandura in Polish written chronicle...

User talk:HenryS

2008-02-23T17:30:44Z

Bandurist: /* My vandal counter */

Now I see that you are back. Great. --[[User:Joaquín Martínez]], [[User talk:Joaquín Martínez|talk]] 21:08, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Welcome back!--[[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] 22:14, 11 January 2008 (EST)

: Are you back? --[[User:Joaquín Martínez]], [[User talk:Joaquín Martínez|talk]] 10:21, 5 February 2008 (EST)

== My vandal counter ==

It's there, but I had to hide it, because it attracted too many <s>Bohdans</s> vandals. [[User:HelpJazz|Help]][[User talk:HelpJazz|Jazz]] 00:03, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Could you have a read of [[Holodomor denial]]. Thanks.--[[User:Bandurist|Bandurist]] 12:30, 23 February 2008 (EST)

Holodomor denial

2008-02-23T17:29:08Z

Bandurist: /* Video resources */

'''Holodomor Denial ''' is the act of stating that the [[Holodomor]], the disastrous famine of 1932-1933 in Eastern Ukraine then known as the [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic]], in the [[Soviet Union]]), never took place.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2002/280214.shtml Famine denial The Ukrainian Weekly, July 14, 2002, No. 28, Vol. LXX]</ref><ref>''

Initially he Soviet government dismissed all references to the famine as anti-Soviet propaganda. Denial of the famine declined after the Communist Party lost power and the Soviet empire disintegrated'' @ [http://books.google.com/books?ei=_WZ3R9CwDZnmtQO3xeXQCg&id=c-8YAAAAIAAJ&dq=Holodomor+Denial&q=%22Denial+of+the+famine%22&pgis=1#search Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity By Dinah Shelton; Page 1055] ISBN 0028658485</ref><ref>After over half a century of denial, in January 1990 the [[Communist Party of Ukraine]] adopted a special resolution admitting that the Ukrainian Famine had indeed occurred. [http://books.google.com/books?id=5Ef8Hrx8Cd0C&pg Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts - Page 93] ISBN 0415944295</ref>

The Holodomor was denied immediately and repeatedly by Soviet authorities (starting with President [[Mikhail Kalinin]] and Foreign Minister [[Maxim Litvinov]]), and this denial continued unabated, well into the 1980s.<ref name="Conquest">[[Robert Conquest]], ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine'' [[Oxford University Press]] (1987), ISBN 0195051807, p. 308. [http://books.google.com/books?id=Bp31GmfH-6YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=harvest+of+sorrow&sig=ONivvVYlMPCPY0pb41NXw-AL8dE#PPA320,M1]</ref>

The Soviet stance was supported by Soviet-friendly journalists from the [[Western world|West]], such as [[Walter Duranty]] and [[Louis Fischer]]. Today, Holodomor denial continues the field of leftist fringe writers, and not supported by any serious academic scholars.

In November 2006, the [[Verkhovna Rada|Ukrainian Parliament]] passed a bill branding the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.<ref>Jan Maksymiuk, [http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/11/03ac02a4-6e3a-481b-8932-fafd4c13abab.html "Ukraine: Parliament Recognizes Soviet-Era Famine As Genocide"], ''[[Radio Free Europe|RFE/RL]]'', [[November 29]], [[2006]]</ref> In November 2007, the [[government of Ukraine]] tabled a law which would make public statements of both Holodomor and [[Holocaust denial]] illegal acts in Ukraine.

==Soviet Union==
===Cover-up during the famine===

The Soviet leadership undertook extensive efforts to prevent the spread of any information about the Holodomor. State communications about the famine were kept a [[top secret]]. [[Joseph Stalin]] and [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] sent a telegram to the party and provincial police chiefs requiring that Ukrainian peasants going north to [[Russia]] to seek bread were to be stopped.<ref>[[Robert Conquest]] ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company (2004), ISBN 0-393-05933-2, page 102.</ref> The telegram blamed the influx of peasants on [[Poland|Polish]] agents, who allegedly wanted to start a famine scare. [[State Political Directorate|OGPU]] chairman [[Genrikh Yagoda]] reported that over two hundred thousands peasants had been sent back. The secret correspondence included a letter sent by a party official from [[Dnipropetrovsk]] where he warned that "there will be no one left" alive to sow and ensure grain production, unless some amount of grain will not be taken. Molotov replied that the needs of the state, as "defined in party resolutions", are more important than the lives of people.<ref>[[Robert Conquest]] ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company (2004), ISBN 0-393-05933-2, page 102.</ref>

Various acts were committed to conceal the true number of dead people. Out of 9,472 only 3,997 corpses were registered in the Kyiv Medical Inspectorate. Similar cover-ups took place everywhere.<ref name="reflections"/>

===Early years===

While the famine was taking place, [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] authorities denied its existence. It was a criminal offense to mention the famine, punishable with a five-year term in the [[Gulag]] [[labor camp]]s; placing the blame on the authorities led to a death sentence.<ref name="reflections">[[Robert Conquest]] ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, p. 96</ref>

As a result the population growth failed to meet the expected targets set by the Communist party. When this became evident from the population statistics data, three successive heads of the [[Goskomstat|Soviet Central Statistical Administration]] were executed, while others were arrested.<ref>Lisa Shymko, [http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12306 "The Politics of Genocide"], ''[[The American Spectator]]'', [[November 14]] [[2007]]</ref>

The [[Soviet Census (1937)|1937 Soviet Census]] was thought to be exemplary due to its apparent thoroughness and near-perfect organization. Government officials in charge of the census received state awards immediately upon the census conclusion. When it became apparent that the final population figures were significantly lower than expected, the results were classified and the census organizers were repressed. The new [[Soviet Census (1939)|1939 census]] was organized in such a way as to have certainly inflated data on population numbers. It showed a population figure of 170.6 million people, manipulated so as to match the numbers stated by [[Joseph Stalin]] in his report to the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party. No other censuses were conducted until 1959.

=== Official Holodomor denial by Soviet officials ===

Soviet President [[Mikhail Kalinin]] responded to Western offers of food by telling of “political cheats who offer to help the starving Ukraine,” and commented that, “only the most decadent classes are capable of producing such cynical elements."<ref>[http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3513136.html How Liberals Funked It]</ref><ref name="reflections"/>

In an interview with [[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones]] in March 1933, Soviet Foreign Minister [[Maxim Litvinov]] stated, “Well, there is no famine", and went on to say, "You must take a longer view. The present hunger is temporary. In writing books you must have a longer view. It would be difficult to describe it as hunger.”<ref name="Jones-Litvinov">[[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones]], [http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/st_patricks/litvinov_famine_denia_oldl.htm Interview with Maxim Litvinov], March 1933</ref>

On instructions from Litvinov, Boris Skvirsky, embassy counselor of the recently opened Soviet Embassy in the [[United States]], published a letter on [[January 3]], [[1934]], in response to a pamphlet about the Holodomor.<ref name="Carynnyk">Marco Carynnyk, [http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1983/398325.shtml "The New York Times and the Great Famine"], ''The Ukrainian Weekly'', [[September 25]], [[1983]], No. 39, Vol. LI</ref> In his letter, Skvirsky stated that the idea that the Soviet government was "deliberately killing the population of the Ukraine" "wholly grotesque." He claimed that the Ukrainian population was increasing at an annual rate of 2 percent during the preceding five years. He asserted that the death rate in Ukraine "was the lowest of that of any of the constituent republics composing the Soviet Union," concluding that it "was about 35 percent lower than the pre-war death rate of [[Russian Empire|tsarist]] days."<ref name="Mace">James E. Mace, [http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml "Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine"] (paper delivered at a conference on "Recognition and Denial of Genocide and Mass Killing in the 20th Century", held in [[New York City]] on [[November 13]], [[1987]]), ''[[The Ukrainian Weekly]]'', [[January 10]], [[1988]], No. 2, Vol. LVI</ref>

===The early 1980s===

In 1983 for the first time, Holodomor remembrance was co-ordinated by the Ukrainian community world wide. The [[Ukrainian diaspora]] exerted pressure on the media and various governments, including the governments of the [[United States]] and [[Canada]], to raise the issue of the Holodomor with the government of the Soviet Union. The United States created a Commission into the famine. The Soviet authorities predicted this commission would place the Soviet state responsible for the act.<ref name="symp">[http://www.cym.org/au/archives/Holodomor.pdf The Great Famine of 1932-33 - A Symposium], [[22 October]], [[2003]], pp.4-5</ref>

In an attempt to counter this, the [[Soviet government]] admitted that some peasantry died to climatic conditions mainly [[drought]].

===Glasnost and the late 1980s===

The future [[President of Ukraine]], [[Leonid Kravchuk]], was charged in 1983 with finding rainfall evidence for the 1930s famine. However, Kravchuk's inquiry into the rainfalls for the 1933-1932 period found that they were within normal parameters.<ref name="Bandera">Stephen Bandera, [http://www.homin.ca/news_view.php?category=top&news=1016&lang=en "Holodomor as a source of national unity"], ''Ukrainian Echo'', [[February 5]], [[2007]]</ref>

It was only during the late 1980s that the Soviet Government admitted that its agricultural policies played a direct role in the causing Holodomor. Ultimately, as President of Ukraine, Kravchuk would admit to the cover-up attempts, and support in recognizing the Holodomor as genocide.<ref name="Bandera"/>

==Contemporary denial outside of the USSR==

===Walter Duranty and ''The New York Times''===

One of the first Western Holodomor deniers was [[Walter Duranty]]. Duranty was the winner of the 1932 [[Pulitzer prize]] in journalism in the category of correspondence, for his dispatches on [[Russia]] and the working out of the [[Five-Year Plan (USSR)|Five Year Plan]].<ref>[http://duranty.pelech.org/duranty2003/pulitzer2003.pdf "Correspondence between Markian Pelech and the Board of the Pulitzer Prizes regarding Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize"] ([[December 30]], [[2002]]–[[April 28]], [[2003]])</ref> While the famine was raging, he wrote in the pages of ''[[The New York Times]]'' that "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda," and that "There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."<ref>[[Arnold Beichman]], [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/791vwuaz.asp ''Pulitzer-Winning Lies''], ''[[The Weekly Standard]]'', [[June 12]] [[2003]]</ref>

In his reports, Duranty downplayed the impact of food shortages in Ukraine. In private however, he told [[Eugene Lyons]] and reported to the [[United Kingdom|British]] Embassy that at least seven million had died of famine <ref> Embassy dispatch dated [[30 September]] [[1933]] included the following: "According to Mr. Duranty the population of [[North Caucasus]] and the Lower [[Volga River|Volga]] had decreased in the past year by three million, and the population of Ukraine by four to five million" (cited from ''"Reflections on the ravaged century"'', p. 123)</ref>. Duranty acted more like a spokesman for the Soviet government than an independent reporter for a Western newspaper. As Duranty wrote in a dispatch from Moscow in March 1933, "Conditions are bad, but there is no famine... But—to put it brutally—you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."<ref name="NYT">[http://www.nytco.com/company/awards/statement.html "New York Times Statement About 1932 Pulitzer Prize Awarded to Walter Duranty"]</ref>

Duranty wrote articles denying the fact that the Holodomor was taking place in Ukraine. He also wrote denunciations of those who wrote about the famine, accusing them of being reactionaries and [[anti-communism|anti-Bolshevik]] [[propaganda|propagandists]]. Duranty continued to repeat Soviet disinformation without verifying its veracity. As the ''New York Times'' notes: "Taking Soviet propaganda at face value this way was completely misleading, as talking with ordinary Russians might have revealed even at the time."<ref name="NYT"/>

In August 1933, [[Theodor Cardinal Innitzer]] of [[Vienna]] called for relief efforts, stating that the Ukrainian famine was claiming lives “likely. . . numbered. . . by the millions” and driving those still alive to [[infanticide]] and [[cannibalism]]. ''The New York Times'', [[August 20]], [[1933]], reported Innitzer’s charge and published an official denial: “in the Soviet Union we have neither [[cannibalism|cannibals]] nor [[cardinal (Catholicism)|cardinals]]”. The next day, the Times added Duranty’s own denial.

[[United Kingdom|British]] journalist [[Malcolm Muggeridge]] characterized Duranty as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism."<ref>[[Robert Conquest]]. ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine'' [[Oxford University Press]] (1987), ISBN 0195051807, page 320. [http://books.google.com/books?id=Bp31GmfH-6YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=harvest+of+sorrow&sig=ONivvVYlMPCPY0pb41NXw-AL8dE#PPA320,M1]</ref>

Campaigns were launched in 1986 for the retraction of the Pulitzer Prize given to ''[[The New York Times]]''. Despite the fact that the [[Times]] admits that the fraudulent coverage led to it receiving the prize, they have refused to relinquish it.<ref>[http://duranty.pelech.org/duranty2003/pulitzer2003.pdf Correspondence between Markian Pelech and the Board of Pulitzer Prizes]</ref> The Times acknowledges that "some of Duranty's editors criticized his reporting as tendentious", and that "collectivization was the main cause of a famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine, the Soviet [[breadbasket]], in 1932 and 1933 - two years after Duranty won his prize."<ref name="NYT"/>

===Louis Fischer and ''The Nation''===

[[Louis Fischer]], an American reporter who glossed over Soviet reality had a deep ideological commitment to [[communism]] dating back to 1920. Fischer traveled to Ukraine in October and November of 1932, for ''[[The Nation]]'', and was initially alarmed at what he saw. "In the [[Poltava]], [[Vinnitsa]], [[Podolsk]] and [[Kiev]] regions, conditions will be hard," he wrote, "I think there is no starvation anywhere in Ukraine now — after all they have just gathered in the harvest but it was a bad harvest."

Initially critical of the Soviet grain procurement program because it created food problem, Fischer adopted the official Soviet government view, which blamed the problem on Ukrainian [[counter-revolutionary]] [[Nationalism|nationalist]] "[[Wrecking (Soviet crime)|wreckers]]." It seemed "whole villages" had been "contaminated" by such men, who were deported to "lumbering camps and mining areas in distant agricultural areas which are now just entering upon their pioneering stage." These steps were forced upon the [[Kremlin]], Fischer wrote, but the Soviets were, nevertheless, learning how to rule wisely.

Fischer was on a lecture tour in the United States when [[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones']] famine story broke. Speaking to a college audience in [[Oakland, California]], a week later, Fischer stated emphatically: "There is no starvation in [[Russia]]." He spent the spring of 1933 campaigning for American diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union. As rumors of a famine in the USSR reached American shores, Fischer continued to vociferously deny the reports.

Fischer's article entitled "Russia's Last Hard Year," stated, "The first half of 1933 was very difficult indeed. Many people simply did not have sufficient nourishment." Fischer blamed poor weather and the refusal of peasants to harvest the grain, which then rotted in the fields. Government requisitions drained the countryside of food, he admitted, but military needs (a potential conflict with [[Japan]]) explained the need for such deadly thoroughness in grain collections.<ref name="fischer">[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/westobservs.htm Louis Fisher], at ArtUkraine.com</ref>

Fischer maintained his general optimism about the Soviet Union through the publication of his ''Soviet Journey'' in 1935. The book devoted three pages to a discussion of the famine of 1932-1933, where he wrote of food left rotting in the fields as the result of peasants' "passive resistance." Fischer once again blamed the peasants directly for having "brought the calamity upon themselves" and stressed the positive results ensuing from Bolshevik victory in the countryside, and connected the famine to peasant action (or inaction).<ref name="fischer"/>

===Communist Party of the USA ===

The Ukrainian American community upon receiving reports of the Famine in November and December 1933 organized marches in a number of U.S. cities to protest against American recognition of a government which was starving millions of Ukrainians.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref name="sulz">[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref> [[Communist Party USA|American Communists]] resorted to violence in an attempt to silence the Ukrainians.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref><ref>[http://www.shevchenko.org/famine/21_27.htm Dushnyck, Walter. 50 Years Ago: The Famine Holocaust in Ukraine: Terror and Human Misery as Instruments of Russian Imperialism]</ref> On [[November 18]], [[1933]], in [[New York City]], 8,000 Ukrainians marched from [[Washington Square Park, New York|Washington Square Park]] to 67th Street, while 500 Communists ran beside the parade and snatched the Ukrainians' handbills, spat on the marchers and tried to hit them.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref> Five persons were injured.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref> Only the presence of 300 policemen on foot and a score on horseback leading the parade and riding along its flanks prevented serious trouble.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref name="sulz">

In [[Chicago]], on [[December 17]], [[1933]], several hundred Communists mounted a massed attack on the vanguard of 5,000 Ukrainian American marchers, leaving over 100 injured in what ''The New York Times'' called "the worst riot in years":

"Brick, clubs, rotten eggs and other missiles rained on the marchers from the Hermitage Avenue elevated station bridging Madison Street. The street fight which followed saw brass knuckles, blackjacks, fists and rifle butts used until a dozen squads of police restored order."<ref name="Mace"/>

=== Holodomor denial by Foreign Dignitaries visiting the USSR ===

Prominent dignitaries who visited the Soviet Union in 1934, such as [[George Bernard Shaw]] and [[H. G. Wells]], are also on record as denying the existence of the Famine in Ukraine<ref>[http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/communism/com107.html Stalin-Wells talk / the verbatim record and a discussion by G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, J.M. Keynes, E. Toller and others]</ref>.

In 1934 the British Foreign Office in the House of Lords stated that there was no evidence to support the allegations against the Soviet government regarding the Famine in Ukraine. The testimony of Sir John Maynard, a renowned famine expert who visited the Ukraine in the summer of 1933 rejected tales of famine-genocide propagated by the Ukrainians<ref>[http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/ukrainian.html The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth]</ref>.

The height of manipulation was reached during a visit to Ukraine carried out between [[August 26]] and [[September 9]], [[1933]], by [[Prime Minister of France|French Prime Minister]] [[Edouard Herriot]], who denied accounts of the famine. The day before his arrival, all beggars, homeless children and starving people were removed from the streets. Shop windows in local stores were filled with food, but purchases were forbidden, and anyone coming too close to the stores was arrested. The streets were washed. Just like all other [[Western World|Western]] visitors, Herriot met fake "peasants," all selected Communists or Komsomol members, who showed him healthy cattle.<ref>''Reflections'', p. 122</ref> Herriot declared to the press that there was no famine in Ukraine, that he did not see any trace of it, and that this showed adversaries of the Soviet Union were spreading the rumor. "When one believes that the Ukraine is devastated by famine, allow me to shrug my shoulders," he declared. The [[September 13]] [[1933]] issue of ''[[Pravda]]'' was able to write that Herriot "categorically contradicted the lies of the bourgeoisie press in connection with a famine in the
USSR."<ref>[http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/ukraine2005/Etienne%20Thevein%20%20English%20translation.pdf "France, Germany and Austria Facing the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine"]</ref>.

The lack of knowledge of this genocide was observed by English writer [[George Orwell]], who commented that "''huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of [[England|English]] [[Russophiles]]"''.<ref>George Orwell, "''Notes on Nationalism''" in "The ''Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell''" ([[London]], 1968), Vol. 3, p. 370.</ref>

Orwell clearly knew of a press cover-up about the famine as in his 1945, Proposed Preface to Animal Farm he wrote:
“…it was considered equally proper to publicize famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.”<ref>[http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/farmer_jones-%20reorder.htm Was Gareth Jones's surname behind George Orwell’s naming of ‘Farmer Jones' in Animal Farm?.]</ref> For an interesting 'work-in-progress' including a discussion on the influence of the Ukrainian Famine and Holodomor denial by Duranty on Orwell's book "Animal Farm" see Nigel Colley's article [http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/farmer_jones-%20reorder.htm Was Gareth Jones's surname behind George Orwell’s naming of ‘Farmer Jones' in Animal Farm?].

==Modern denial==
===The 50th Anniversary===

The rallying and lobbying of the Ukrainian Diaspora Community around the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor became a concern for the governing body of the Soviet Union.<ref name="symp"/> In February 1983, the [[Politburo]] of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] (CPSU) activated its counter-[[propaganda]] section to focus on the Ukrainian famine. The head of the directorate for relations with foreign countries for the CPSU, A. Merkulov, was given the task of directing [[disinformation]] to the West and contacted [[Leonid Kravchuk]], the chief idealog for the Communist Party in Ukraine. The materials were to be sent to the [[RIA Novosti|Novosti Press]] (APN) centers in the [[United States]] and [[Canada]] to demonstrate the "antidemocratic base of the Ukrainian bourgeois Nationalists, the collaboration of the [[Stepan Bandera|Banderovtsev]] and the [[Adolf Hitler|Hitlerite]] Fascists during the [[World War II|Second World War]]."<ref>ЦГАООУ. Ф.1. Оп. 25 Д. 2719. Л.27-28. Подлинник.</ref>

In preparation for the expected rise in activity associated with the 55th anniversary, the Soviet Union launched a campaign of disinformation. In [[Canada]], the [[Association of United Ukrainian Canadians]] (a pro-Communist Labor temple (Hall) movement in the Ukrainian community) published numerous articles denying the Holodomor in Ukraine in its English and Ukrainian language magazines and newspapers. Through its chain of bookstore outlets, it distributed pamphlets and materials whose point supplied to them from the counter-propaganda section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 2007, correspondence and instructions from Soviet sources such as the [[Ukraina Society]] to the organization regarding the Holodomor have been made available for study by scholars.

In an open letter to [[Mikhail Gorbachov]] in August 1987, veteran dissident [[Viacheslav Chornovil]] wrote about the denial of the Holodomor by the Communist Party of the USSR, and also Western denial.<ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/historical/sovcrimes.htm "Soviet crimes remain unpunished"]</ref>
<blockquote>
"The biggest and most infamous blank spot in the Soviet history of Ukraine is the hollow silence for over 50 years about the genocide of the Ukrainian nation organized by Stalin and his henchmen ... The Great Famine of 1932-33, which took millions of human lives. In one year - 1933 - my people lost more than throughout all of World War II, which ravaged our land."
</blockquote>

===Douglas Tottle and Holodomor denial ===

In 1987 the Canadian trade-unionist and activist [[Douglas Tottle]], published the controversial book ''Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: the Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard'', where he claimed that the Holodomor was "fraudulent", and "a creation of [[Nazism|Nazi]] propagandists".<ref name="tottle">Douglas Tottle, [http://www.rationalrevolution.net/special/library/famine.htm/ "Fraud, famine, and fascism: the Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard"], Toronto: Progress Books, 1987. ISBN 0919396518</ref> By the author's own account, his book is only carried by 28 libraries around the world. His book, published by the Communist ''Progress Publishers'' in [[Toronto]], appeared practically at the same time Ukrainian Communist party leader [[Volodymyr Shcherbytsky]] publicly acknowledged the Holodomor, in December 1987, and the book was subsequently withdrawn from circulation.<ref>[http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-September/021722.html link Letter from David R. Marples]</ref> Only the first two chapters of the book deal with the Famine in Ukraine. The rest is written to discredit the work done by western Scholars, to associate the Ukrainian diaspora in the West with Fascism, and to discredit the US support of Holodomore research. Nevertheless, the book is available on the internet, and continues to be cited as an "invaluable" and "important" book by groups such as the [[Stalin Society]] in [[Great Britain]], author [[Jeff Coplon]], and others.

In a review of Tottle's book in the ''[[Ukrainian Canadian Magazine]]'', published by the pro-Communist Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, [[Wilfred Szczesny]] wrote: "Members of the general public who want to know about the famine, its extent and causes, and about the motives and techniques of those who would make this tragedy into something other than what it was will find Tottle's work invaluable" (''The Ukrainian Canadian'', April 1988, p. 24).<ref name="Szcz">[http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/serbyn/ "The last stand of the Ukrainian famine-genocide deniers"]</ref>

In his book, ''Searching for place'', Lubomyr Luciuk comments: "For a particularly base example of famine-denial literature, see Tottle, ''Fraud, famine, and fascism...''".<ref>Lubomyr Luciuk, ''Searching for place: Ukrainian displaced persons, Canada, and the migration of memory'', Toronto: [[University of Toronto Press]], 2000, p. 413. ISBN 0802042457</ref> Professor [[Roman Serbyn]] a professor of history at the University of Quebec at Montreal has published an analysis and review of Tottles book which is available [http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/serbyn/ here].

===Jeff Coplon===

Tottle's book inspired a number of articles by other Holodomor deniers, such as [[Jeff Coplon]]'s article ''"In Search of a Soviet Holocaust"''.<ref name="coplon">Jeff Coplon, [http://www.chss.montclair.edu/English/furr/vv.html "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust"], ''[[The Village Voice]]'', [[January 12]], [[1988]].</ref> This article not only denies the Holodomor, but also tries to associate those who continued to bring the Holodomor to the attention of the public with the [[Nazism|Nazis]], even giving quotes from [[Adolf Hitler]]'s ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' to stress this point.
<blockquote>
"Just as the Nazis used the OUN for their own ends, so has [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] exploited the famine, from his purple-prosed commemoration of "this callous act" to his backing of the Mace commission. ... But if people could be convinced that Communism is worse than fascism; that [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] was an insane monster, even worse than Hitler; that the seven million died in more unspeakable agony than the six million ... One cannot appease an [[Evil empire|Evil Empire]], after all.<ref name="conlon" />
</blockquote>
Coplon also penned the article ''"Rewriting History - How Ukrainian nationalists imposed their doctored history on High School Students"'' heavily relying on Tottle's publication with his additional comments regarding the inclusion the Holodomor as one of a number of subjects included in the curriculum for social studies classes in New York. In the article published in the magazine "CAPITAL Region" March 1988, he wrote: <blockquote>
''"The losers, of course, are the New York state schoolchildren, who will absorb this disinformation between algebra and chemistry - and may even be asked to parrot the fraud for a higher score on their regents exam."''
<ref>[http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/essays/coplonrewriting88.pdf Rewriting History - How Ukrainian nationalists imposed their doctored history on High School Students]</ref>
</blockquote>

Other similar writings include an article by [[Wilfred Szczesny]] ("Fraud, Famine and Fascism", ''The Ukrainian Canadian'', April 1988); an unsigned article ("The Ukrainian Famine: Fact or Fiction"), which appeared in the ''[[McGill Daily]]'', [[November 22]], [[1988]],<ref name="Szcz" /> and Challenge-Desafio's ("The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33"),<ref>[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33]</ref> which appeared in a newspaper of the [[Progressive Labor Party (United States)|Progressive Labor Party]] in 1987.<ref>[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html "The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33"], ''Challenge-Desafio'', [[February 25]], [[1987]].</ref>

===Stephan Merl===

In 1989, [[Stephan Merl]] (a professor at [[Bielefeld University]]) published "Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot von 1932-1933 zur Auslöschung des ukrainischen Nationalismus?".<ref>Stephan Merl, "Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot von 1932-1933 zur Auslöschung des ukrainischen Nationalismus?", ''Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas'' 37 (1989), vol. 4, p. 569-590</ref> This publication, once again relying heavily on Tottle, describes the work of [[James Mace]] and [[Robert Conquest]] as part of a campaign by Ukrainian nationalists to discredit the Soviet Union and pillory liberal journalists like Walter Duranty.<ref>[http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-September/021722.html Letters of David Marples]</ref>

===Mario Sousa===

In 1998 [[Mario Sousa]] published "''Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union''"[http://www.mariosousa.se/LiesconcerningthehistoryoftheSovietUnion.html Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union].

Sousa's arguments against the Holodomor are based on his interpretation that the early Holodomor campaign was started by the Nazi's and was later taken up and funded by Ukrainian refugees who he states were Nazi collaborators. Sousa continues that Holodomor scholarship was later supported by the CIA during the [[Cold War]] specifically aimed at slandering and discrediting the Soviet government.

===The Stalin Society===

Holodomor denial continues into the 21st century with the publication of "''The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth''", a pamphlet penned by prominent British physician [[John Puntis]] and published in July 2002 by the [[Stalin Society]]. The Stalin Society itself has been described as "''tiny, aging and schism-ridden''"<ref>[http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article120991.ece "Stalin apologists drink to the memory of Uncle Joe"], ''[[The Independent]]'', [[2 March]] [[2003]]</ref>. Once again heavily relying on Tottle, facts are reinterpreted with sources questioned, numbers questioned and the whole history of the famine made to look like the continuation of the Cold War<ref>[http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/ukrainian.html#After The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth]</ref>.

==Holodomor denial in University courses==

In 2004 Toronto University offered a history course on "The Soviet Union and the Stalin Question" by M. Rodsky. Rather than starting from a neutral point of view, Rodsky took a revisionist version of Stalin and the history of the Soviet Union. In his third lecture in the series he approached "The Famine in Ukraine: What is the Truth?". The reading list consisted exclusively of materials that denied the existence of the Holodomor<ref>[http://individual.utoronto.ca/mrodden/study/ssustudy.html The Soviet Union and the Stalin Question]</ref>.

* In Search of a SOVIET HOLOCAUST (short reading)[http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/vv.html Here]
* The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33 (longer reading)[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html here]
* Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union by Mario Sousa (scroll down and read 'The myth concerning the famine in the Ukraine')
* Maoist Internationalist Movement's Review of the [http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/bookstore/commie.html The Black Book of Communism]'Black Book of Communism' (scroll down and read 'The Ukrainian famine')
* Fraud Famine & Fascism by Douglas Tottle, International Publishers (Can be purchased from the Communist Party of Canada, 190A Danforth Ave.)

==Symposia about Holodomor denial==

In November 2007, an International Conference entitled ''The Ukrainian Holodomor and the Denial of Genocides'' was organized by the [[Guarini Institute]], and held at [[John Cabot University]], in [[Italy]]. The Ukrainian Ambassador, [[Heorhiy Cheriavskyi]], addressed the conference and spoke about the importance of international education and recognition of the Ukrainian Holodomor. [[Federigo Argentieri]], from the Guarini Institute, read the paper: “''Ideology and Diplomacy: How the Ukrainian Famine Was—and Still is—Denied''.” In his presentation, Argentieri introduced the history of denial of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33. Conflicting reports on the events in 1933 highlighted the willingness of the [[great power|Great Powers]] to ignore the plain facts witnessed by British government officials in the Soviet Union. At the time, political and economic interests took precedence over internal human rights matters. Argentieri noted that today, the famine remains virtually ignored, even in academic circles in the West.<ref>[http://intranet.johncabot.edu/myjcu/public_site/news.aspx?cat=News "The Ukranian Holodomor and the Denial of Genocides"]</ref>

==Holodomor denial and Ukrainian law==

On [[November 28]] [[2006]], Ukraine's parliament, the [[Verkhovna Rada]], passed a law recognizing the 1932–1933 Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. The voting figures were as follows: supporting the bill were [[BYuT]]—118 deputies, [[NSNU]]—79 deputies, [[Socialist Party of Ukraine|Socialists]]—30 deputies, 4 independent deputies, and the [[Party of Regions]]—2 deputies (200 deputies did not cast a vote). The [[Communist Party of Ukraine]] voted against the bill. In all, 233 deputies supported the bill—a minimum of 226 votes were required for it to be passed.<ref>[http://www.day.kiev.ua/179841/ "Holodomor and Holocaust denial to be a criminal offense"], [[3 April]] [[2007]]</ref><ref>[http://www.lucorg.com/luc/news.php?id=2241 "What the Verkhovna Rada actually passed"], [[February 28]], [[2007]]</ref>

A draft law "On Amendments to the Criminal and the Procedural Criminal Codes of Ukraine" was submitted by [[President of Ukraine|President]] [[Viktor Yushchenko]] for consideration by the [[Verkhovna Rada|Ukrainian Parliament]]. The draft law envisages prosecution for public denial of the Holodomor Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine as a fact of genocide of the Ukrainian people, and of [[the Holocaust]] as the fact of genocide of the [[Jew]]ish people. The draft law foresees that public denial as well as production and dissemination of materials denying the above shall be punished by a fine of 100 to 300 untaxed minimum salaries, or imprisonment of up to two years.<ref>[http://www.nrcu.gov.ua/index.php?id=148&listid=56782 "Public denial of Holodomor Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as genocide of Ukrainian people to be prosecuted"], [[December 12]], [[2007]]</ref>

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Sources==
*Andreopoulos, George J., Ed. ''Genocide: conceptual and historical dimensions'', Philadelphia: [[University of Pennsylvania Press]], 1994. ISBN 0812232496
*Colorosa, Barbara, ''Extraordinary evil: a brief history of genocide'', New York: Penguin Group, 2007. ISBN 0670066044
*Conquest, Robert, ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7
*Conquest, Robert, ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company, 2004. ISBN 0-393-05933-2
*New Internationalist. Justice After Genocide. December (385). 2005.
*Paris, Erna. ''Long shadows: truth, lies, and history'', New York: [[Bloomsbury Publishing|Bloomsbury]], 2001. ISBN 1582342105
*Springer, Jane, ''Genocide'', Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2006. ISBN 0888996810
*Tauger, Mark B., [http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2500600 ''The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933''], [[Slavic Review]], Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 70-89
*[[James Waller|Waller, James]], ''Becoming evil: how ordinary people commit genocide and mass killing'', Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]], 2002. ISBN 0195148681
*Crowl, James William, ''Angels in Stalin's Paradise. Western Reporters in Soviet Russia, 1917 to 1937. A case study of Louis Fisher and Walter Duranty'', [[University Press of America]], 1982. ISBN 0819121851
*Taylor, Sally J., ''Stalin's apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Times's man in Moscow'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN 0195057007

==Video resources==
* Harvest of Despair. (1983), produced by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Center.

[[Category:Ukraine]]
[[Category:Genocide]]

Ukrainian genocide

2008-02-23T17:28:27Z

Bandurist: /* Memorials and Remembrances */

[[Image:Holodomor2.jpg|right|thumb|Holodomor victims]]
The word '''Holodomor''' ([[Ukrainian]]: Голодомор) is the name given to the [[genocide]] of the [[Ukrainian]] people around the years 1932-1933. The name literally means "death by hunger". It is sometimes known as Ukraine's "forced famine" or called "Ukraine's Unknown Holocaust". Holodomor was a man-made [[famine]] carried out by [[Stalin]] and the [[Soviet]]s to intentionally destroy the nationalistic Ukrainian people who posed a threat to the Soviet Union. The Soviets forcibly collectivized almost all of the Ukrainian farms in the "breadbasket of the world" and stole the peasant’s food, thereby creating a devastating famine.
<ref> Rep. [[Henry Hyde]] said, "In an attempt to break the spirit of an independent-minded Ukrainian peasantry, and ultimately to secure [[collectivization]], Stalin ordered the expropriation of all foodstuffs in the hands of the rural population. The grain was shipped to other areas of the Soviet Union or sold on the international market. Peasants who refused to turn over grain to the state were deported or executed. Without food or grain, mass starvation ensued. This manmade famine was the consequence of deliberate policies which aimed to destroy the political, cultural and human rights of the Ukrainian people." [http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/uscongr4.htm] </ref>
Even though the man-made famine affected other areas, such as the Volga Basin and the Northern [[Caucasus]], the term ''Holodomor'' refers specifically to the genocide of the Ukrainians.

== Causes ==
[[Image:Collectingcorpses.jpg|right|thumb|Collecting Corpses]]
In 1930 collectivization began of the farms of [[Ukraine]] as part of [[Stalin]]'s [[Five Year Plans]]. The Ukrainian peasants, who had a long tradition of private ownership of farmland, stubbornly resisted the [[Soviets]] efforts. The man-made famine was caused in part due to this resistance, and in part to destroy the Ukrainian people. The people were a danger to the [[Soviet Union]] due to their nationalistic aspirations, that is their desire for independence.<ref>''Голод На Україні 1932-1933''. Selected articles. Compiled by Nadia Karatnycky. Suchasnist, 1985.</ref> At the time of the famine 1932-34, Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, teachers, and political leaders were also harassed, persecuted, and executed<ref>http://ukrainians.rutgers.edu/holodomor.htm</ref>.

==Results==
The total results of the famine were horrific. Up to 14.5 million people were starved to death.<ref name=Conquest>Robert Conquest ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine''. Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-19-505180-7.</ref> In the years 1932-1933, between 7 and 10 million people were killed in [[Ukraine]] alone.<ref>[http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages\T\E\Terror.htm Encyclopedia of Ukraine]</ref> It is estimated that over 25,000 people died a day, 1000 an hour, and 17 a minute. Many of these victims were children. The total number of deaths surpassed those of [[World War I]].<ref name=Conquest /> [[Cannibalism]] was reported across the country<ref>[http://www.ucca.org/famine/ Ukrainian Congress Committee of America]</ref>.

{{cquote|"Our neighbour killed his wife, dismembered her body and was seen to make soup of her"<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3229000.stm BBC News ''Ukraine marks great famine anniversary'']</ref>}}

It is estimated that the famine claimed the lives of 10-20% of Ukraine's population.<ref>http://ukrainians.rutgers.edu/holodomor.htm</ref> Famous [[Russian]] author [[Boris Pasternak]], who visited the area, commented{{cquote|"What I saw could not be expressed in words. There was such inhuman, unimaginable misery, such a terrible disaster, that it began to seem almost abstract, it would not fit within the bounds of consciousness. I fell ill. For an entire year I could not write."<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,963051,00.html TIME ''The War Against the Peasants'']</ref>}}

==Cover-up and "Controversy"==
[[Image:Holodomorchildren.jpg|left|thumb|Starving children Poltava, 1933]]
Holodomor was forcefully covered up by both the Soviet authorities and by various Soviet sympathizers in the West.<ref name=Conquest /> At the time the genocide was committed, the Soviet authorities tried to keep any mention of it from coming out. Later, they kept any information from coming out from behind the Iron Curtain. Soviet historians tried to erase all evidence of this tragedy. They were aided by Western journalists like [[Walter Duranty]] of the ''New York Times'', who not only helped conceal all evidence of Holodomor, but also called other journalists who reported on it liars<ref>[http://www.ucca.org/famine/ Ukrainian Congress Committee of America]</ref><ref name=Conquest />. The lack of knowledge of this genocide was observed by English writer [[George Orwell]], who commented "''huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of [[English]] [[Russophiles]]"''.<ref>"''Notes on Nationalism''" in "The ''Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell''" ([[London]], 1968), Vol. 3, p. 370.</ref> The Soviets managed to cover this up until Ukraine’s independence in 1991. Official Soviet documents recently declassified revealed that the genocide was indeed intended to target the Ukrainian people<ref>http://5tv.com.ua/eng/newsline/184/0/33564/</ref>.

To this day there are still [[Stalinists]] and Russophiles who attempt to deny Holodomor was genocide, despite the fact that the governments of over 10 nations have officially recognized it as genocide. These countries are: [[United States of America|U.S.A.]], [[Canada]], [[Estonia]], [[Argentina]], [[Australia]], [[Italy]], [[Hungary]], [[Lithuania]], [[Georgia]], [[Poland]], and Ukraine itself <ref>[http://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/Holodomor/Passed_resolutions/IVForum_petition.html List of nations recognizing the genocide of the Ukrainians]</ref>. Also included is [[Pope John Paul II]].<ref>[http://www.skrobach.com/ukrhol.htm Official statement of Pope John Paul II.]</ref> In 2003, the 70th anniversary of the famine, Soviet sympathizers in the [[United Nations|UN]] said the famine "ranks with the worst atrocities of our time" but did not use the word genocide<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4471256.stm BBC News ''Ukraine demands 'genocide' marked'']</ref>. Russia still refuses to admit that it committed genocide. In 2003 the Russian ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, said "We're not going to apologise... there is nobody to apologise to.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4471256.stm BBC News ''Ukraine demands 'genocide' marked'']</ref>" The Russians were, however, well aware of what was really going on. One of Stalin's lieutenants claimed in 1933 that the genocide was working. He said it showed the peasants "who is the master here. It cost millions of lives, but the collective farm system is here to stay.<ref>[http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/ukra.html Library of Congress, ''Revelations from the Russian Archives, Ukrainian Famine'']</ref>" In 1988, the U. S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine reported to [[Congress]], confirming that genocide was committed<ref>[http://www.faminegenocide.com/resources/findings.html U. S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine reported to Congress]</ref>.

==Memorials and Remembrances==
[[Image:Holodomor.jpg|right|thumb|Memorial in Kyiv]]
The fourth Sunday of November is officially Holodomor Remembrance Day<ref>http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/forcedfam.htm</ref>. President [[Viktor Yushchenko]] has proposed a bill in [[Verkhovna Rada]], Ukraine's parliament, to strenghthen punishment for denial of Holodomor<ref>[http://ww8.president.gov.ua/en/news/data/1_14606.html President of Ukraine Official Website ''President proposes Holodomor bill'']</ref> There are many memorials for Holodomor victims throughout North America and Ukraine, the most famous being in [[Kiev|Kyiv]](Kiev).

==See also==
[[Holodomor denial]]

==References==
<references/>

== External links ==
* [http://www.archives.gov.ua/Sections/Famine/photos.php?2#photo Ukrainian Govornment photo archives]
* [http://ukrainians.rutgers.edu/holodomor.htm Rutgers Ukrainian Studies]
* [http://www.ukrainianmuseum.org/0311ukrmus_UNFamineBrochure.pdf Brochure of Ukrainian Museum presentation to the UN]
* [http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/ Information and archive of links]
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3897393411603039499&q=famine ''Harvest of Despair'' Documentary Film]
* [http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=/pages/f/a/famine.htm Encyclopedia of Ukraine Entry ''"Famine"'']
* [http://shevchenko.org/famine/index.htm Bibliography for Further Reading]
* [http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/uscongr4.htm Statement of US House of Representatives]
* [http://www.senat.gov.pl/K6/DOK/uch/007/a/090uch.pdf Official Statement of Polish Government]
[[Category:European History]]
[[Category:Ukraine]]
[[Category:Genocide]]

Holodomor denial

2008-02-23T17:27:36Z

Bandurist:

User talk:Bandurist

2008-02-23T17:00:25Z

Bandurist: /* Holodomor denial */

{{Welcome|sig=[[User:DanH|DanH]] 15:35, 25 December 2007 (EST)}}
==Holodomor denial==
Please do not just slightly rephrase Wikipedia entries and then put them here.--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 21:32, 22 February 2008 (EST)
:Alright - it was restored - but you need to do some major clean up to it- i already fixed the tags (remember to end the tags in order - you had weird formatting at the end, everything was in a blockquote) - and I removed a image that doesn't exist on CP - but you need to do the rest.--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 11:55, 23 February 2008 (EST)

Thank you very much. I shall hop to it now. --[[User:Bandurist|Bandurist]] 12:00, 23 February 2008 (EST)

User:Bandurist

2008-02-23T14:27:15Z

Bandurist: New page: Born in Sydney, Australia. Living since 1988 in Toronto, Canada. Currently completing my requirements for a PhD in Music on Ukrainian bandura music. Interests are folk music of E...

Born in [[Sydney]], Australia.
Living since 1988 in Toronto, Canada.
Currently completing my requirements for a PhD in Music on Ukrainian [[bandura]] music.

Interests are folk music of Eastern Europe and Eastern European history, musical instrument history and construction.

User talk:Iduan

2008-02-23T14:24:41Z

Bandurist: /* References */

{{User talk:Iduan/header}}
{| style="background:navy;text-align:center" width="100%"
|-
|style="background:white; border: 2px solid maroon; font-weight:bold; font-variant:small-caps"|<div class="horizontal">
*[[/Archive1|(August)]]
*[[/Archive2|(September)]]
*[[/Archive3|(October)]]
*[[/Archive4|(November)]]
*[[/Archive5|(December)]] 
*[[/Archive6|(January)]]
*[[/Archive7|(February)]]
</div>
|}

==NFL Templates==
Thanks for making those NFL Templates. I noticed some of them weren't being used in the articles, so I inserted them. I hope you continue making those templates. --[[User:Crocoite|Crocoite]] 16:29, 8 February 2008 (EST)
:Ahh, thank you, yeah there was a question of what namespace they should go in for a while - but I think it's pretty much been resolved that the template namespace is adequate; and I certainly do plan on continuing soon! Thanks for putting them in consistently (I like the fact that you put it in its own section - that makes it a lot more clear and it also makes the pages nicer)--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 16:31, 8 February 2008 (EST)
:: Those templates were originally in template namespace, and I suggested (months ago) that they shouldn't be. My reasons were as follows:
::* If they are only used on one page, there's little point in making templates for them.
::* Current policy is for templates to be locked, so if the roster changes (as I expect would happen reasonably often) then a sysop needs to change (or at least unlock) them.
::* If you don't want complex tables cluttering up the article, then they could be put into a sub-page and linked into the article as a template.
:: Now, if something has changed, such as them now being used on multiple pages, then that changes things, but otherwise I think they should not be in template namespace. I've not seen any other discussion on this, so if there is one somewhere, and particularly if it mentions factors that I haven't considered, could you point me to it please? I'm not laying this down as law, but I think it's pertinent to consider.
:: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 22:58, 8 February 2008 (EST)
:::The only reason I said I thought they should be in the template namespace is because when I started transferring them to the mainspace others started telling me to stop ... I mean frankly I'm fine with you moving them, I'll even go back and fix all the links - because I actually believe that they should be in the mainspace (since they're only being used on one page) - but ultimately it's your call - just give me the heads up whatever you decide and I'll go in and change the links.--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 10:20, 9 February 2008 (EST)
:::: Where were those "others [who] started telling [you] to stop" doing so? I'd like to see that conversation. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 05:31, 11 February 2008 (EST)
:::::Re by email[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 11:55, 11 February 2008 (EST)
The comment was sometime back - another sysop ultimately stopped my attempt to move the tables from the templatespace to the mainspace for that very reason; but again if you delete those templates (or move them depending on what's necessary), then I can fix all the links--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 23:32, 11 February 2008 (EST)
: (Iduan advised by e-mail that the sysop is no longer with us, and the conversation was off Conservapedia). The only references to where templates should be that I can find are:
:* [[Help:Creating templates]] says that " templates are ''normally'' created in the "Template" namespace" (my emphasis). I would consider this to be the nearest thing to a directive on the matter, and it clearly allows for exceptions.
:* [[Help:How to create a new article#Templates]] says to "Precede the name with the word "template" and a colon." However, I consider this to be a "how to" rather than a "must do", so it doesn't count.
:* For what it's worth, [[User talk:Philip J. Rayment/Archive 4#Templates]] is a brief conversation I had some time back with Tash on this very subject.
: So I'm not making policy here, but I'm saying that there's apparently no policy preventing a template being in a sub-page, and whilst we might not like that idea normally, this seems to me a pretty clear case of it being appropriate.
: Please list the templates to be moved on [[User:Philip J. Rayment/Article renaming project|this page]], and you can also mark there when the links are fixed up.
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 08:58, 12 February 2008 (EST)

== Guard dog ==

What's the deal with that? --[[User:MakeTomorrow|MakeTomorrow]] 17:27, 8 February 2008 (EST)
:From what I've heard, and I'm not going to give away everything because I don't know what's final and what's not, it's an experimental program meant to more easily block vandals without the presence of admins - I was mistakenly blocked by it; but luckily Philip was there to explain.--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 17:30, 8 February 2008 (EST)

::Sweet! That will be awesome...except then we don't get to block them ourselves. :/ [[User:BethanyS|~BCS]][[User talk:BethanyS|Talk2'''ME''']] 17:34, 8 February 2008 (EST)
:::: It won't pick up all types of vandalism, so there will still be plenty of opportunities for you to block editors! [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 18:07, 8 February 2008 (EST)
:Ah...Okay...still it's really awesome(genius). :P [[User:BethanyS|~BCS]][[User talk:BethanyS|Talk2'''ME''']] 18:16, 8 February 2008 (EST)
:::Haha - it does sound pretty awesome - Philip = amazingness--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 17:36, 8 February 2008 (EST)
Very true![[User:BethanyS|~BCS]][[User talk:BethanyS|Talk2'''ME''']] 17:37, 8 February 2008 (EST)
:Wow, sounds like a very useful system. --[[User:Liam Spencer|''' L.S. ''']] 17:44, 8 February 2008 (EST)

Looks pretty lame to me, but that may have just been the beta… --[[User:MakeTomorrow|MakeTomorrow]] 10:30, 9 February 2008 (EST)

: Sorry about that latest block. Rather than it needing a bit more fine tuning, in this case it appears to be a bug. I've turned it right off for now, until I can find and fix the bug. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 16:59, 9 February 2008 (EST)

::It's fine, don't worry about it. --[[User:MakeTomorrow|MakeTomorrow]] 23:13, 9 February 2008 (EST)
:::Uhmm - well I think he was actually referring to my block (since I was the latest), but regardless - it's fine philip, lol--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 23:18, 9 February 2008 (EST)
:::: I ''was'' referring to you, Iduan. I've got no sympathy for MakeTomorrow who deliberately put it to the test. :-) [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 05:26, 11 February 2008 (EST)

== [[Template:USState]] ==

Congratulations. Looks good.--[[User:TerryH|TerryH]][[User talk:TerryH|Talk]] 17:28, 9 February 2008 (EST)
:Thanks - I'm actually kind of nervous about the looks ... but I appreciate your support (oh and by the way - good thinking to use switch!)--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 17:31, 9 February 2008 (EST)

== Singular/plural ==

Sorry if i missed this in the [[Conservapedia:Manual of Style|MOS]], but is there a preference to have singular or plural article names? I found the [[Optic lobes]] article (plural title) and created [[Optic lobe]] with a redirect to it. I wasn't sure if what I did was ok, or if the singular title should redirect to the plural title, or if both are acceptable.--[[User:Recorder|Recorder]] 11:49, 11 February 2008 (EST)

:I changed the redirect to the singular. Redirecting to the plural makes linking more difficult. [[User:BrianCo|BrianCo]] 14:24, 11 February 2008 (EST)
::Thanks.--[[User_talk:Recorder|Recorder]] 22:36, 11 February 2008 (EST)

== Good boy! ==

Thanks.
--[[User:Joaquín Martínez]], [[User talk:Joaquín Martínez|talk]] 23:06, 12 February 2008 (EST)

Great blocks. Thanks for the help. --[[User:Crocoite|Crocoite]] 21:06, 13 February 2008 (EST)

== HilaryDuff ==

Boy, you were quick! [[Conservapedia:Guard dog|Guard dog]] alerted me to this, but before I could respond, you had! [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 23:15, 16 February 2008 (EST)
:Haha, IDuan = the new Guarddog? lol--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 23:15, 16 February 2008 (EST)

==Judge==
Iduan, since you seem to be the one who organized this contest; I have a question: Could I be a contest judge? Thanks! :P [[User:BethanyS|~BCS]][[User talk:BethanyS|Talk2'''ME''']] 16:41, 17 February 2008 (EST)
:You should probably check with Andy - but if it's up to me: well, I just don't think you're reliable enough. Just kidding - of course! you'd be a great judge!--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 16:43, 17 February 2008 (EST)
::Thanks! I will get Mr. Schlafly's permission and proceed from there! :P [[User:BethanyS|~BCS]][[User talk:BethanyS|Talk2'''ME''']] 16:44, 17 February 2008 (EST)

== Washington State ==

Not working, sorry. --[[User:Joaquín Martínez]], [[User talk:Joaquín Martínez|talk]] 19:03, 17 February 2008 (EST)
:Yeah I just realized that, my fault - thanks--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 19:22, 17 February 2008 (EST)

==Quality New Entry==

Hey Iduan! I was reading through your contributions. That an amazing point total! I just had one question: Why are [[Washington State University]] and [[Emory University]] counted as quality new entries although they do not have two paragraphs or three references? I might be confused about the rules, but I was pretty sure that an entry had to meet those requirements in order to earn 20 points. Thanks, ~ [[User:SharonS|Sharon]][[User talk:SharonS|Talk]] 06:15, 18 February 2008 (EST)
:Yeah - I was wrong to call those quality - I actually got one of them confused with another article that I had written, but every thing's fixed now. Thanks,--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 12:32, 18 February 2008 (EST)

==Hate to say this...but...==
[[Washington State University|this entry]] and [[Emory University|this entry]] are not quatlity new entries. Sorry! :{ [[User:BethanyS|~BCS]][[User talk:BethanyS|Talk2'''ME''']] 09:57, 18 February 2008 (EST)
:Oh no - you're right, sorry, I'll change that now.--[[User:Iduan|I]][[User_talk:Iduan|Duan]] 12:16, 18 February 2008 (EST)
::Thanks! :P [[User:BethanyS|~BCS]][[User talk:BethanyS|Talk2'''ME''']] 19:34, 18 February 2008 (EST)

== [[Io]] ==

I'm not finished with [[Io]] yet! It's just that I need to get to bed right about now, and wanted to publish what I had already. I will have ''much'' to say about Io and its volcanism.

You might also want to check out [[Ganymede]]. I think that Ganymede presents some problems for uniformitarian theories of the origin of the [[solar system]].--[[User:TerryH|TerryH]][[User talk:TerryH|Talk]] 22:57, 18 February 2008 (EST)

==Post-contest==
Well done, fantastic edits and work rate as we've come to expect! :D Win or lose, it was good fun testing our mettle against your team :) [[Image:User Fox.png|10px]] [[User:Fox|Fox]] ([[User talk:Fox|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/Fox|contribs]]) 07:22, 21 February 2008 (EST)

==References==
Hello, I keep trying to properly reference my work using the techniques and tools suggested, but some of them don't seem to work properly, could you give me some pointers please, it would make my edits more accurate and help me convey the full meaning of what I'm trying to say, so that you don't get a garbled half-truth of what I was trying to say. Thanks! Also, I've noticed that all of my work, no matter how many references I (try to) put on there seems to be instantly removed, is there any reason, or do you just not approve of the facts?[[User:Entheogenicorder|Entheogenicorder]] 13:22, 21 February 2008 (BWT)

==Holodomor denial==

Hi. I originally wrote the [[Holodomor]] denial article for Wikipedia starting in January. It has been challenged constantly with numerous attempts to remove it because it criticizes the left wing sensibilities of some of the editors there. I was working on a re-edited version of the article for Conservapedia hoping that such vandalism would not happen here. Is it possible to bring back the article so that I can continue the edit?

Thanks

--[[User:Bandurist|Bandurist]] 09:24, 23 February 2008 (EST)

Holodomor denial

2008-02-23T02:28:37Z

Bandurist: New article

'''Holodomor Denial ''' is the act of stating that the [[Holodomor]], the disastrous famine of 1932-1933 in eastern [[Ukraine]] (at the time, part of the [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic]], in the [[Soviet Union]]), never took place.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2002/280214.shtml Famine denial The Ukrainian Weekly, July 14, 2002, No. 28, Vol. LXX]</ref><ref>''

Initially he Soviet government dismissed all references to the famine as anti-Soviet propaganda. Denial of the famine declined after the Communist Party lost power and the Soviet empire disintegrated'' @ [http://books.google.com/books?ei=_WZ3R9CwDZnmtQO3xeXQCg&id=c-8YAAAAIAAJ&dq=Holodomor+Denial&q=%22Denial+of+the+famine%22&pgis=1#search Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity By Dinah Shelton; Page 1055] ISBN 0028658485</ref><ref>After over half a century of denial, in January 1990 the [[Communist Party of Ukraine]] adopted a special resolution admitting that the Ukrainian Famine had indeed occurred. [http://books.google.com/books?id=5Ef8Hrx8Cd0C&pg Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts - Page 93] ISBN 0415944295</ref>

The Holodomor was denied immediately and repeatedly by Soviet authorities (starting with President [[Mikhail Kalinin]] and Foreign Minister [[Maxim Litvinov]]), and this denial continued unabated, well into the 1980s.<ref name="Conquest">[[Robert Conquest]], ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine'' [[Oxford University Press]] (1987), ISBN 0195051807, p. 308. [http://books.google.com/books?id=Bp31GmfH-6YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=harvest+of+sorrow&sig=ONivvVYlMPCPY0pb41NXw-AL8dE#PPA320,M1]</ref>

The Soviet stance was supported by Soviet-friendly journalists from the [[Western world|West]], such as [[Walter Duranty]] and [[Louis Fischer]]. Today, Holodomor denial continues the field of leftist fringe writers, and not supported by any serious academic scholars.

In November 2006, the [[Verkhovna Rada|Ukrainian Parliament]] passed a bill branding the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.<ref>Jan Maksymiuk, [http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/11/03ac02a4-6e3a-481b-8932-fafd4c13abab.html "Ukraine: Parliament Recognizes Soviet-Era Famine As Genocide"], ''[[Radio Free Europe|RFE/RL]]'', [[November 29]], [[2006]]</ref> In November 2007, the [[government of Ukraine]] tabled a law which would make public statements of both Holodomor and [[Holocaust denial]] illegal acts in Ukraine.

==Soviet Union==
===Cover-up during the famine===

The Soviet leadership undertook extensive efforts to prevent the spread of any information about the Holodomor. State communications about the famine were kept a [[top secret]]. [[Joseph Stalin]] and [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] sent a telegram to the party and provincial police chiefs requiring that Ukrainian peasants going north to [[Russia]] to seek bread were to be stopped.<ref>[[Robert Conquest]] ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company (2004), ISBN 0-393-05933-2, page 102.</ref> The telegram blamed the influx of peasants on [[Poland|Polish]] agents, who allegedly wanted to start a famine scare. [[State Political Directorate|OGPU]] chairman [[Genrikh Yagoda]] reported that over two hundred thousands peasants had been sent back. The secret correspondence included a letter sent by a party official from [[Dnipropetrovsk]] where he warned that "there will be no one left" alive to sow and ensure grain production, unless some amount of grain will not be taken. Molotov replied that the needs of the state, as "defined in party resolutions", are more important than the lives of people.<ref>[[Robert Conquest]] ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company (2004), ISBN 0-393-05933-2, page 102.</ref>

Various acts were committed to conceal the true number of dead people. Out of 9,472 only 3,997 corpses were registered in the Kyiv Medical Inspectorate. Similar cover-ups took place everywhere.<ref name="reflections"/>

===Early years===

While the famine was taking place, [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] authorities denied its existence. It was a criminal offense to mention the famine, punishable with a five-year term in the [[Gulag]] [[labor camp]]s; placing the blame on the authorities led to a death sentence.<ref name="reflections">[[Robert Conquest]] ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, p. 96</ref>

As a result the population growth failed to meet the expected targets set by the Communist party. When this became evident from the population statistics data, three successive heads of the [[Goskomstat|Soviet Central Statistical Administration]] were executed, while others were arrested.<ref>Lisa Shymko, [http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12306 "The Politics of Genocide"], ''[[The American Spectator]]'', [[November 14]] [[2007]]</ref>

The [[Soviet Census (1937)|1937 Soviet Census]] was thought to be exemplary due to its apparent thoroughness and near-perfect organization. Government officials in charge of the census received state awards immediately upon the census conclusion. When it became apparent that the final population figures were significantly lower than expected, the results were classified and the census organizers were repressed. The new [[Soviet Census (1939)|1939 census]] was organized in such a way as to have certainly inflated data on population numbers. It showed a population figure of 170.6 million people, manipulated so as to match the numbers stated by [[Joseph Stalin]] in his report to the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party. No other censuses were conducted until 1959.

=== Official Holodomor denial by Soviet officials ===

Soviet President [[Mikhail Kalinin]] responded to Western offers of food by telling of “political cheats who offer to help the starving Ukraine,” and commented that, “only the most decadent classes are capable of producing such cynical elements."<ref>[http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3513136.html How Liberals Funked It]</ref><ref name="reflections"/>

In an interview with [[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones]] in March 1933, Soviet Foreign Minister [[Maxim Litvinov]] stated, “Well, there is no famine", and went on to say, "You must take a longer view. The present hunger is temporary. In writing books you must have a longer view. It would be difficult to describe it as hunger.”<ref name="Jones-Litvinov">[[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones]], [http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/st_patricks/litvinov_famine_denia_oldl.htm Interview with Maxim Litvinov], March 1933</ref>

On instructions from Litvinov, Boris Skvirsky, embassy counselor of the recently opened Soviet Embassy in the [[United States]], published a letter on [[January 3]], [[1934]], in response to a pamphlet about the Holodomor.<ref name="Carynnyk">Marco Carynnyk, [http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1983/398325.shtml "The New York Times and the Great Famine"], ''The Ukrainian Weekly'', [[September 25]], [[1983]], No. 39, Vol. LI</ref> In his letter, Skvirsky stated that the idea that the Soviet government was "deliberately killing the population of the Ukraine" "wholly grotesque." He claimed that the Ukrainian population was increasing at an annual rate of 2 percent during the preceding five years. He asserted that the death rate in Ukraine "was the lowest of that of any of the constituent republics composing the Soviet Union," concluding that it "was about 35 percent lower than the pre-war death rate of [[Russian Empire|tsarist]] days."<ref name="Mace">James E. Mace, [http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml "Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine"] (paper delivered at a conference on "Recognition and Denial of Genocide and Mass Killing in the 20th Century", held in [[New York City]] on [[November 13]], [[1987]]), ''[[The Ukrainian Weekly]]'', [[January 10]], [[1988]], No. 2, Vol. LVI</ref>

===The early 1980s===

In 1983 for the first time, Holodomor remembrance was co-ordinated by the Ukrainian community world wide. The [[Ukrainian diaspora]] exerted pressure on the media and various governments, including the governments of the [[United States]] and [[Canada]], to raise the issue of the Holodomor with the government of the Soviet Union. The United States created a Commission into the famine. The Soviet authorities predicted this commission would place the Soviet state responsible for the act.<ref name="symp">[http://www.cym.org/au/archives/Holodomor.pdf The Great Famine of 1932-33 - A Symposium], [[22 October]], [[2003]], pp.4-5</ref>

In an attempt to counter this, the [[Soviet government]] admitted that some peasantry died to climatic conditions mainly [[drought]].

===Glasnost and the late 1980s===

The future [[President of Ukraine]], [[Leonid Kravchuk]], was charged in 1983 with finding rainfall evidence for the 1930s famine. However, Kravchuk's inquiry into the rainfalls for the 1933-1932 period found that they were within normal parameters.<ref name="Bandera">Stephen Bandera, [http://www.homin.ca/news_view.php?category=top&news=1016&lang=en "Holodomor as a source of national unity"], ''Ukrainian Echo'', [[February 5]], [[2007]]</ref>

It was only during the late 1980s that the Soviet Government admitted that its agricultural policies played a direct role in the causing Holodomor. Ultimately, as President of Ukraine, Kravchuk would admit to the cover-up attempts, and support in recognizing the Holodomor as genocide.<ref name="Bandera"/>

==Contemporary denial outside of the USSR==

===Walter Duranty and ''The New York Times''===

One of the first Western Holodomor deniers was [[Walter Duranty]], the winner of the 1932 [[Pulitzer prize]] in journalism in the category of correspondence, for his dispatches on [[Russia]] and the working out of the [[Five-Year Plan (USSR)|Five Year Plan]].<ref>[http://duranty.pelech.org/duranty2003/pulitzer2003.pdf "Correspondence between Markian Pelech and the Board of the Pulitzer Prizes regarding Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize"] ([[December 30]], [[2002]]–[[April 28]], [[2003]])</ref> While the famine was raging, he wrote in the pages of ''[[The New York Times]]'' that "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda," and that "There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."<ref>[[Arnold Beichman]], [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/791vwuaz.asp ''Pulitzer-Winning Lies''], ''[[The Weekly Standard]]'', [[June 12]] [[2003]]</ref>

In his reports, Duranty downplayed the impact of food shortages in Ukraine, although in private he told [[Eugene Lyons]] and reported to the [[United Kingdom|British]] Embassy that at least seven million had died of famine <ref> Embassy dispatch dated [[30 September]] [[1933]] included the following: "According to Mr. Duranty the population of [[North Caucasus]] and the Lower [[Volga River|Volga]] had decreased in the past year by three million, and the population of Ukraine by four to five million" (cited from ''"Reflections on the ravaged century"'', p. 123)</ref>. Duranty acted more like a spokesman for the Soviet government than an independent reporter for a Western newspaper. As Duranty wrote in a dispatch from Moscow in March 1933, "Conditions are bad, but there is no famine... But—to put it brutally—you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."<ref name="NYT">[http://www.nytco.com/company/awards/statement.html "New York Times Statement About 1932 Pulitzer Prize Awarded to Walter Duranty"]</ref>

Duranty wrote articles denying the fact that the Holodomor was taking place in Ukraine. He also wrote denunciations of those who wrote about the famine, accusing them of being reactionaries and [[anti-communism|anti-Bolshevik]] [[propaganda|propagandists]]. He continued to do this despite visiting the famine-stricken areas and informing the British embassy of the several million who had died. Duranty repeated Soviet propaganda without verifying its veracity. As the ''New York Times'' notes: "Taking Soviet propaganda at face value this way was completely misleading, as talking with ordinary Russians might have revealed even at the time."<ref name="NYT"/>

In August 1933, [[Theodor Cardinal Innitzer]] of [[Vienna]] called for relief efforts, stating that the Ukrainian famine was claiming lives “likely. . . numbered. . . by the millions” and driving those still alive to [[infanticide]] and [[cannibalism]]. ''The New York Times'', [[August 20]], [[1933]], reported Innitzer’s charge and published an official denial: “in the Soviet Union we have neither [[cannibalism|cannibals]] nor [[cardinal (Catholicism)|cardinals]]”. The next day, the Times added Duranty’s own denial.

[[United Kingdom|British]] journalist [[Malcolm Muggeridge]] characterised Duranty as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism."<ref>[[Robert Conquest]]. ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine'' [[Oxford University Press]] (1987), ISBN 0195051807, page 320. [http://books.google.com/books?id=Bp31GmfH-6YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=harvest+of+sorrow&sig=ONivvVYlMPCPY0pb41NXw-AL8dE#PPA320,M1]</ref>

Campaigns were launched in 1986 for the retraction of the Pulitzer Prize given to ''[[The New York Times]]''. Despite the fact that the Times admits that the fraudulent coverage led to it receiving the prize, they have refused to relinquish it.<ref>[http://duranty.pelech.org/duranty2003/pulitzer2003.pdf Correspondence between Markian Pelech and the Board of Pulitzer Prizes]</ref> The Times acknowledges that "some of Duranty's editors criticized his reporting as tendentious", and that "collectivization was the main cause of a famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine, the Soviet [[breadbasket]], in 1932 and 1933 - two years after Duranty won his prize."<ref name="NYT"/>

===Louis Fischer and ''The Nation''===

Next to Duranty, the American reporter most consistently willing to gloss Soviet reality was [[Louis Fischer]], who had a deep ideological commitment to [[communism]] dating back to 1920. When Fischer traveled to Ukraine in October and November of 1932, for ''[[The Nation]]'', he was alarmed at what he saw. "In the [[Poltava]], [[Vinnitsa]], [[Podolsk]] and [[Kiev]] regions, conditions will be hard," he wrote, "I think there is no starvation anywhere in Ukraine now—after all they have just gathered in the harvest but it was a bad harvest."

Initially critical of the Soviet grain procurement program because it created the food problem, Fischer adopted the official Soviet government view, which blamed the problem on Ukrainian [[counter-revolutionary]] [[Nationalism|nationalist]] "[[Wrecking (Soviet crime)|wreckers]]." It seemed "whole villages" had been "contaminated" by such men, who had to be deported to "lumbering camps and mining areas in distant agricultural areas which are now just entering upon their pioneering stage." These steps were forced upon the [[Kremlin]], Fischer wrote, but the Soviets were, nevertheless, learning how to rule wisely.

Fischer was on a lecture tour in the United States when [[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones']] famine story broke. Speaking to a college audience in [[Oakland, California]], a week later, Fischer stated emphatically: "There is no starvation in [[Russia]]." He spent the spring of 1933 campaigning for American diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union. As rumors of a famine in the USSR reached American shores, Fischer vociferously denied the reports.

Fischer's article entitled "Russia's Last Hard Year," stated, "The first half of 1933 was very difficult indeed. Many people simply did not have sufficient nourishment." Fischer blamed poor weather and the refusal of peasants to harvest the grain, which then rotted in the fields. Government requisitions drained the countryside of food, he admitted, but military needs (a potential conflict with [[Japan]]) explained the need for such deadly thoroughness in grain collections.<ref name="fischer">[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/westobservs.htm Louis Fisher], at ArtUkraine.com</ref>

Fischer maintained his general optimism about the Soviet Union through the publication of his ''Soviet Journey'' in 1935. The book devoted three pages to a discussion of the famine of 1932-1933, in which Fischer described his October travels through Ukraine. He told of food left rotting in the fields as the result of peasants' "passive resistance." Fischer blamed the peasants directly for having "brought the calamity upon themselves." Fischer stressed the positive results ensuing from Bolshevik victory in the countryside, and connected the famine to peasant action (or inaction).<ref name="fischer"/>

===Communist Party of the USA ===

The Ukrainian American community in November and December 1933 organized marches in a number of U.S. cities to protest against American recognition of a government which was starving millions of Ukrainians.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref name="sulz">[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref> [[Communist Party USA|American Communists]] resorted to violence in an attempt to silence the Ukrainians.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref><ref>[http://www.shevchenko.org/famine/21_27.htm Dushnyck, Walter. 50 Years Ago: The Famine Holocaust in Ukraine: Terror and Human Misery as Instruments of Russian Imperialism]</ref> On [[November 18]], [[1933]], in [[New York City]], 8,000 Ukrainians marched from [[Washington Square Park, New York|Washington Square Park]] to 67th Street, while 500 Communists ran beside the parade and snatched the Ukrainians' handbills, spat on the marchers and tried to hit them.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty42.htm Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times]</ref> Five persons were injured.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref> Only the presence of 300 policemen on foot and a score on horseback leading the parade and riding along its flanks prevented serious trouble.<ref>[http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1988/028822.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine]</ref><ref name="sulz">

In [[Chicago]], on [[December 17]], [[1933]], several hundred Communists mounted a massed attack on the vanguard of 5,000 Ukrainian American marchers, leaving over 100 injured in what ''The New York Times'' called "the worst riot in years":

"Brick, clubs, rotten eggs and other missiles rained on the marchers from the Hermitage Avenue elevated station bridging Madison Street. The street fight which followed saw brass knuckles, blackjacks, fists and rifle butts used until a dozen squads of police restored order."<ref name="Mace"/>

=== Holodomor denial by Foreign Dignitaries Visiting the USSR ===

Prominent dignitaries who visited the Soviet Union in 1934, such as [[George Bernard Shaw]] and [[H. G. Wells]], are also on record as denying the existence of the Famine in Ukraine<ref>[http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/communism/com107.html Stalin-Wells talk / the verbatim record and a discussion by G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, J.M. Keynes, E. Toller and others]</ref>.

In 1934 the British Foreign Office in the House of Lords stated that there was no evidence to support the allegations against the Soviet government regarding the Famine in Ukraine. The testimony of Sir John Maynard, a renowned famine expert who visited the Ukraine in the summer of 1933 rejected tales of famine-genocide propagated by the Ukrainian Nationalists<ref>[http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/ukrainian.html The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth]</ref>.

The height of manipulation was reached during a visit to Ukraine carried out between [[August 26]] and [[September 9]], [[1933]], by [[Prime Minister of France|French Prime Minister]] [[Edouard Herriot]], who denied accounts of the famine. The day before his arrival, all beggars, homeless children and starving people were removed from the streets. Shop windows in local stores were filled with food, but purchases were forbidden, and anyone coming too close to the stores was arrested. The streets were washed. Just like all other [[Western World|Western]] visitors, Herriot met fake "peasants," all selected Communists or Komsomol members, who showed him healthy cattle.<ref>''Reflections'', p. 122</ref> Herriot declared to the press that there was no famine in Ukraine, that he did not see any trace of it, and that this showed adversaries of the Soviet Union were spreading the rumour. "When one believes that the Ukraine is devastated by famine, allow me to shrug my shoulders," he declared. The [[September 13]] [[1933]] issue of ''[[Pravda]]'' was able to write that Herriot "categorically contradicted the lies of the bourgeoisie press in connection with a famine in the
USSR."<ref>[http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/ukraine2005/Etienne%20Thevein%20%20English%20translation.pdf "France, Germany and Austria Facing the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine"]</ref>.

The lack of knowledge of this genocide was observed by English writer [[George Orwell]], who commented that "''huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of [[England|English]] [[Russophiles]]"''.<ref>George Orwell, "''Notes on Nationalism''" in "The ''Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell''" ([[London]], 1968), Vol. 3, p. 370.</ref>

Orwell clearly knew of a press cover-up about the famine as in his 1945, Proposed Preface to Animal Farm he wrote:
“…it was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.”<ref>[http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/farmer_jones-%20reorder.htm Was Gareth Jones's surname behind George Orwell’s naming of ‘Farmer Jones' in Animal Farm?.]</ref> For an interesting 'work-in-progress' including a discussion on the influence of the Ukrainian Famine and Holodomor denial by Duranty on Orwell's book "Animal Farm" see Nigel Colley's article [http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/farmer_jones-%20reorder.htm Was Gareth Jones's surname behind George Orwell’s naming of ‘Farmer Jones' in Animal Farm?].

==Modern denial==
===The 50th Anniversary===

The rallying and lobbying of the Ukrainian Diaspora Community around the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor became a concern for the governing body of the Soviet Union.<ref name="symp"/> In February 1983, the [[Politburo]] of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] (CPSU) activated its counter-[[propaganda]] section to focus on the Ukrainian famine. The head of the directorate for relations with foreign countries for the CPSU, A. Merkulov, was given the task of directing [[disinformation]] to the West and contacted [[Leonid Kravchuk]], the chief idealogue for the Communist Party in Ukraine. The materials were to be sent to the [[RIA Novosti|Novosti Press]] (APN) centres in the [[United States]] and [[Canada]] to demonstrate the "antidemocratic base of the Ukrainian bourgeois Nationalists, the collaboration of the [[Stepan Bandera|Banderovtsev]] and the [[Adolf Hitler|Hitlerite]] Fascists during the [[World War II|Second World War]]."<ref>ЦГАООУ. Ф.1. Оп. 25 Д. 2719. Л.27-28. Подлинник.</ref>

In preparation for the expected rise in activity associated with the 55th anniversary, the Soviet Union launched a campaign of disinformation. In [[Canada]], the [[Association of United Ukrainian Canadians]] (a pro-Communist Labour temple movement in the Ukrainian community) published numerous articles denying the Holodomor in Ukraine in its English and Ukrainian language magazines and newspapers. Through its chain of bookstore outlets, it distributed pamphlets and materials whose point supplied to them from the counterpropaganda section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 2007, correspondence and instructions from Soviet sources to the organization regarding the Holodomor have been made available for study by scholars.

In an open letter to [[Mikhail Gorbachov]] in August 1987, veteran dissident [[Viacheslav Chornovil]] wrote about the denial of the Holodomor by the Communist Party of the USSR, and also Western denial.<ref>[http://www.artukraine.com/historical/sovcrimes.htm "Soviet crimes remain unpunished"]</ref>
<blockquote>
"The biggest and most infamous blank spot in the Soviet history of Ukraine is the hollow silence for over 50 years about the genocide of the Ukrainian nation organized by Stalin and his henchmen ... The Great Famine of 1932-33, which took millions of human lives. In one year - 1933 - my people lost more than throughout all of World War II, which ravaged our land."
</blockquote>

===Douglas Tottle and Holodomor denial ===

In 1987 the Canadian trade-unionist and activist [[Douglas Tottle]], published the controversial book ''Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: the Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard'', where he claimed that the Holodomor was "fraudulent", and "a creation of [[Nazism|Nazi]] propagandists".<ref name="tottle">Douglas Tottle, [http://www.rationalrevolution.net/special/library/famine.htm/ "Fraud, famine, and fascism: the Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard"], Toronto: Progress Books, 1987. ISBN 0919396518</ref> By the author's own account, his book is only carried by 28 libraries around the world. His book, published by the pro-Communist ''Progress Publishers'' in [[Toronto]], appeared practically at the same time Ukrainian Communist party leader [[Volodymyr Shcherbytsky]] publicly acknowledged the Famine, in December 1987, and the book was subsequently withdrawn from circulation.<ref>[http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-September/021722.html link Letter from David R. Marples]</ref> Nevertheless, the book is available on the internet, and continues to be cited as an "invaluable" and "important" book by groups such as the [[Stalin Society]] in [[Great Britain]], author [[Jeff Coplon]], and others.

In a review of Tottle's book in the ''[[Ukrainian Canadian Magazine]]'', published by the pro-Communist Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, [[Wilfred Szczesny]] wrote: "Members of the general public who want to know about the famine, its extent and causes, and about the motives and techniques of those who would make this tragedy into something other than what it was will find Tottle's work invaluable" (''The Ukrainian Canadian'', April 1988, p. 24).<ref name="Szcz">[http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/serbyn/ "The last stand of the Ukrainian famine-genocide deniers"]</ref>

In his book, ''Searching for place'', Lubomyr Luciuk comments: "For a particularly base example of famine-denial literature, see Tottle, ''Fraud, famine, and fascism...''".<ref>Lubomyr Luciuk, ''Searching for place: Ukrainian displaced persons, Canada, and the migration of memory'', Toronto: [[University of Toronto Press]], 2000, p. 413. ISBN 0802042457</ref> Professor [[Roman Serbyn]] a professor of history at the University of Quebec at Montreal has published an analysis and review of Tottles book which is available [http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/serbyn/ here].

===Jeff Coplon===

Tottle's book inspired a number of articles by other Holodomor deniers, such as [[Jeff Coplon]]'s article ''"In Search of a Soviet Holocaust"''.<ref name="conlon">Jeff Coplon, [http://www.chss.montclair.edu/English/furr/vv.html "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust"], ''[[The Village Voice]]'', [[January 12]], [[1988]].</ref> This article not only denies the Holodomor, but also tries to associate those who continued to bring the Holodomor to the attention of the public with the [[Nazism|Nazis]], even giving quotes from [[Adolf Hitler]]'s ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' to stress this point.
<blockquote>
"Just as the Nazis used the OUN for their own ends, so has [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] exploited the famine, from his purple-prosed commemoration of "this callous act" to his backing of the Mace commission. ... But if people could be convinced that Communism is worse than fascism; that [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] was an insane monster, even worse than Hitler; that the seven million died in more unspeakable agony than the six million ... One cannot appease an [[Evil empire|Evil Empire]], after all.<ref name="conlon" />
</blockquote>
Coplon also penned the article ''"Rewriting History - How Ukrainian nationalists imposed their doctored history on High School Students"'' heavily relying on Tottle with his additional comments regarding the inclusion the Holodomor as one of a number of subjects included in the curriculum for social studies classes in New York. In the article published in the magazine "CAPITAL Region" March 1988, he wrote: <blockquote>
''"The losers, of course, are the New York state schoolchildren, who will absorb this disinformation between algebra and chemistry - and may even be asked to parrot the fraud for a higher score on their regents exam."''
<ref>[http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/essays/coplonrewriting88.pdf Rewriting History - How Ukrainian nationalists imposed their doctored history on High School Students]</ref>
</blockquote>
Other similar writings include an article by [[Wilfred Szczesny]] ("Fraud, Famine and Fascism", ''The Ukrainian Canadian'', April 1988); an unsigned article ("The Ukrainian Famine: Fact or Fiction"), which appeared in the ''[[McGill Daily]]'', [[November 22]], [[1988]],<ref name="Szcz" /> and Challenge-Desafio's ("The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33"),<ref>[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33]</ref> which appeared in a newspaper of the [[Progressive Labor Party (United States)|Progressive Labor Party]] in 1987.<ref>[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html "The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33"], ''Challenge-Desafio'', [[February 25]], [[1987]].</ref>

===Stephan Merl===

In 1989, [[Stephan Merl]] (a professor at [[Bielefeld University]]) published "Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot von 1932-1933 zur Auslöschung des ukrainischen Nationalismus?".<ref>Stephan Merl, "Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot von 1932-1933 zur Auslöschung des ukrainischen Nationalismus?", ''Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas'' 37 (1989), vol. 4, p. 569-590</ref> This publication, relying heavily on Tottle, describes the work of [[James Mace]] and [[Robert Conquest]] as part of a campaign by Ukrainian nationalists to discredit the Soviet Union and pillory liberal journalists like Walter Duranty.<ref>[http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-September/021722.html Letters of David Marples]</ref>

===Mario Sousa===

In 1998 [[Mario Sousa]] published "''Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union''"[http://www.mariosousa.se/LiesconcerningthehistoryoftheSovietUnion.html Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union].

Sousa's arguments against the Holodomor are based on his interpretation that the early Holodomor campaign was started by the Nazi's and was later taken up and funded by Ukrainian refugees who he states were Nazi collaborators. It was later supported by the CIA during the [[Cold War]] specifically aimed at slandering and discrediting the Soviet government.

Sousa wrote:

<blockquote>

"The [[Hearst Corporation|Hearst press]] articles asserting that millions were dying of famine in the [[Ukraine]] - a famine supposedly deliberately provoked by the communists - went into graphic and lurid detail. The Hearst press used every means possible to make their lies seem like the truth, and succeeded in causing public opinion in the capitalist countries to turn sharply against the [[Soviet Union]]. This was the origin of the first giant myth manufactured alleging millions were dying in the Soviet Union. In the wave of protests against the supposedly communist-provoked famine which the Western press unleashed, nobody was interested in listening to the Soviet Union's denials and complete exposure of the Hearst press lies, a situation which prevailed from 1934 until 1987! For more than 50 years several generations of people the world over were brought up on a diet of these slanders to harbour a negative view of socialism in the Soviet Union".

</blockquote>

<blockquote>

"The Nazi disinformation campaign about the Ukraine did not die with the defeat of [[Nazi Germany]] in the [[World War II|Second World War]]. The [[Nazism|Nazi]] lies were taken over by the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] and [[MI5]], and were always guaranteed a prominent place in the propaganda war against the Soviet Union. The [[McCarthyism|McCarthyite]] [[anti-communism|anti-communist]] witch hunts after the Second World War also thrived on the tales of the millions who died of starvation in the Ukraine. In 1953 a book on this subject was published in the US. This book was entitled 'Black Deeds of the [[Kremlin]]'. Its publication was financed by Ukrainian refugees in the US, people who had collaborated with the Nazis in the Second World War and to whom the American government gave political asylum, presenting them to the world as 'democrats'.<ref>[http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc9912/lies.htm "Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union"]</ref>

</blockquote>



===The Stalin Society===

Holodomor denial continues into the 21st century with the publication of "''The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth''", a pamphlet penned by prominent British physician [[John Puntis]] and published in July 2002 by the [[Stalin Society]]. The Stalin Society itself has been described as "''tiny, ageing and schism-ridden''"<ref>[http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article120991.ece "Stalin apologists drink to the memory of Uncle Joe"], ''[[The Independent]]'', [[2 March]] [[2003]]</ref>. Once again heavily relying on Tottle, facts are reinterpreted with sources questioned, numbers questioned and the whole history of the famine made to look like the continuation of the Cold War<ref>[http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/ukrainian.html#After The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth]</ref>.

==Holodomor denial in University courses==

In 2004 Toronto University offered a course on "The Soviet Union and the Stalin Question" by M. Rodsky. Rodsky took a revisionist version of Stalin and the history of the Soviet Union. In his third lecture in the series he approached "The Famine in Ukraine: What is the Truth?". The reading list consisted exclusively of materials that denied the existence of the Holodomor<ref>[http://individual.utoronto.ca/mrodden/study/ssustudy.html The Soviet Union and the Stalin Question]</ref>.

* In Search of a SOVIET HOLOCAUST (short reading)[http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/vv.html Here]
* The Hoax of the Man-Made Ukraine Famine of 1932-33 (longer reading)[http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html here]

Extra readings (optional;

* Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union by Mario Sousa (scroll down and read 'The myth concerning the famine in the Ukraine')
* Maoist Internationalist Movement's Review of the [http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/bookstore/commie.html The Black Book of Communism]'Black Book of Communism' (scroll down and read 'The Ukrainian famine')
* Fraud Famine & Fascism by Douglas Tottle, International Publishers (Can be purchased from the Communist Party of Canada, 190A Danforth Ave.)

==Symposia about Holodomor denial==
In November 2007, an International Conference entitled ''The Ukrainian Holodomor and the Denial of Genocides'' was organized by the [[Guarini Institute]], and held at [[John Cabot University]], in [[Italy]]. The Ukrainian Ambassador, [[Heorhiy Cheriavskyi]], addressed the conference and spoke about the importance of international education and recognition of the Ukrainian Holodomor. [[Federigo Argentieri]], from the Guarini Institute, read the paper: “''Ideology and Diplomacy: How the Ukrainian Famine Was—and Still is—Denied''.” In his presentation, Argentieri introduced the history of denial of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33. Conflicting reports on the events in 1933 highlighted the willingness of the [[great power|Great Powers]] to ignore the plain facts witnessed by British government officials in the Soviet Union. At the time, political and economic interests took precedence over internal human rights matters. Argentieri noted that today, the famine remains virtually ignored, even in academic circles in the West.<ref>[http://intranet.johncabot.edu/myjcu/public_site/news.aspx?cat=News "The Ukranian Holodomor and the Denial of Genocides"]</ref>

==Holodomor denial and Ukrainian law==
[[Image:HolodomorKyiv.jpg|thumb|200px|right|[[Holodomor]] monument in [[Kiev]], the capital of [[Ukraine]]]]
On [[November 28]] [[2006]], Ukraine's parliament, the [[Verkhovna Rada]], passed a law recognizing the 1932–1933 Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. The voting figures were as follows: supporting the bill were [[BYuT]]—118 deputies, [[NSNU]]—79 deputies, [[Socialist Party of Ukraine|Socialists]]—30 deputies, 4 independent deputies, and the [[Party of Regions]]—2 deputies (200 deputies did not cast a vote). The [[Communist Party of Ukraine]] voted against the bill. In all, 233 deputies supported the bill—a minimum of 226 votes were required for it to be passed.<ref>[http://www.day.kiev.ua/179841/ "Holodomor and Holocaust denial to be a criminal offense"], [[3 April]] [[2007]]</ref><ref>[http://www.lucorg.com/luc/news.php?id=2241 "What the Verkhovna Rada actually passed"], [[February 28]], [[2007]]</ref>

A draft law "On Amendments to the Criminal and the Procedural Criminal Codes of Ukraine" was submitted by [[President of Ukraine|President]] [[Viktor Yushchenko]] for consideration by the [[Verkhovna Rada|Ukrainian Parliament]]. The draft law envisages prosecution for public denial of the Holodomor Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine as a fact of genocide of the Ukrainian people, and of [[the Holocaust]] as the fact of genocide of the [[Jew]]ish people. The draft law foresees that public denial as well as production and dissemination of materials denying the above shall be punished by a fine of 100 to 300 untaxed minimum salaries, or imprisonment of up to two years.<ref>[http://www.nrcu.gov.ua/index.php?id=148&listid=56782 "Public denial of Holodomor Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as genocide of Ukrainian people to be prosecuted"], [[December 12]], [[2007]]</ref>

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Sources==
*Andreopoulos, George J., Ed. ''Genocide: conceptual and historical dimensions'', Philadelphia: [[University of Pennsylvania Press]], 1994. ISBN 0812232496
*Colorosa, Barbara, ''Extraordinary evil: a brief history of genocide'', New York: Penguin Group, 2007. ISBN 0670066044
*Conquest, Robert, ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7
*Conquest, Robert, ''The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', W.W. Norton and Company, 2004. ISBN 0-393-05933-2
*New Internationalist. Justice After Genocide. December (385). 2005.
*Paris, Erna. ''Long shadows: truth, lies, and history'', New York: [[Bloomsbury Publishing|Bloomsbury]], 2001. ISBN 1582342105
*Springer, Jane, ''Genocide'', Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2006. ISBN 0888996810
*Tauger, Mark B., [http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2500600 ''The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933''], [[Slavic Review]], Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 70-89
*[[James Waller|Waller, James]], ''Becoming evil: how ordinary people commit genocide and mass killing'', Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]], 2002. ISBN 0195148681
*Crowl, James William, ''Angels in Stalin's Paradise. Western Reporters in Soviet Russia, 1917 to 1937. A case study of Louis Fisher and Walter Duranty'', [[University Press of America]], 1982. ISBN 0819121851
*Taylor, Sally J., ''Stalin's apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Times's man in Moscow'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN 0195057007

==Video resources==
* Harvest of Despair. (1983), produced by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre.

Talk:Ukrainian genocide

2008-02-23T01:58:56Z

Bandurist: New page: Hi, Photographs maybe need to be replace. They are from the 1921 Volga famine --~~~~

Hi,

Photographs maybe need to be replace. They are from the 1921 Volga famine
--[[User:Bandurist|Bandurist]] 20:58, 22 February 2008 (EST)