Remembrance Day for the victims of famines is celebrated mainly in modern Ukraine, but other states also have the right to hold such events. In particular, the famine in the USSR that took place in 1932-1933 actually covered the territories of Kazakhstan, the North Caucasus, the Volga region, Western Siberia, Belarus and Ukraine. To a lesser extent, this disaster affected Armenia and Azerbaijan, the eastern regions of the USSR of that time, as well as the Moscow region and territories further to the north, although they were the ones who consumed rather than produced agricultural products.
The famine in Russia was several times a century
In Russia of the pre-revolutionary period, the hunger years were not generally a rarity. Thus, it is believed that food shortages were noted in 1880, 1892 (especially the hungry year), 1891, 1897-1898, the same situation was in 1901, 1905-1908, 1911 and 1913. But the memory of the victims of the Holodomor was not revered at all, since, despite the poor harvests, there were no mass victims among the population. But there was a sufficient reduction in terms of life due to the use of surrogates instead of high-grade products. It is worth noting that the state made attempts to stop the effects of crop failures by creating grain reserves and providing them to those in need during the hungry years. In particular, this system worked especially well in 1911.
Victims of the first famine during the Soviet regime
The situation was somewhat different after the Great October Socialist Revolution, which was followed by the Civil War. Moreover, the overthrow of the tsarist regime was preceded by the First World War. In connection with the crisis of power and chaos reigning in the country, the first famine in Soviet times was recorded in 1921-1922, when a severe drought erupted, which exacerbated existing organizational and military problems. The main affected areas were then the Volga region and the South Urals. Memorial Day for the victims of famines on this occasion has not been established in Russia, although the number of victims is impressive - 5 million people. The situation was so dire that the Bolshevik government accepted the help of Western countries and seized many church values under the guise of helping the starving.
Is the system to blame for the deaths?
The memory of the victims of the famine of 1932-1933 is revered especially because during this period there were no natural prerequisites for such a situation - these years, unlike 1921, 1946, were not lean. Therefore, the death of millions of people is blamed for the communist regime (in accordance with the officially adopted version). It is based on the fact that the government of the USSR since 1927 has been developing plans for continuous collectivization in agriculture by forced methods, since at 95% of the sown area, yields amounted to about half of the pre-war norm. It was planned to put pressure on the prosperous part of farmers, which, after its implementation, led to the fact that able-bodied youth fled to cities, and about 2 million of the most sensible workers were sent to the eastern regions of the country (where hunger was minimal).
The ruin of the “fists" led to a drop in the qualifications of the workforce
Unfortunately, the Memorial Day of the victims of the Holodomor can indeed be celebrated in connection with the long-standing mistakes of the Soviet leadership, since such a policy led to a significant shortage of draft power and a large deterioration in the qualifications of agricultural workers precisely in the most promising regions of the country by the sowing season of 1931. The lack of high-quality farming skills among the remaining collective farmers led to the fact that the fields were not well cultivated (even parts of the Red Army were sent for weeding), and up to one fifth of the total crop was lost during harvesting.
Losses of half the crop and two million victims in Kazakhstan
Remembrance Day for the victims of the famine in Ukraine could never have been instituted if in 1932 about 40 percent of the total grain harvest had not been left in this, at that time Soviet republic. At the same time, almost the same figure (about 36%) was recorded in sources for the grain-growing areas of the Lower and Upper Volga. Therefore, Ukraine in its trouble of that time has “brothers in misfortune” - Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan. The peculiarity of Ukraine is that the famine of those years swept almost its entire territory, so some local historians mistakenly believe that it was directed genocide against the Ukrainian nation. In Kazakhstan, where there is no commemoration of the victims of famines, about 2 million people died from food shortages during the same period, while almost half of the indigenous people then left their place of residence and left for other regions.
The seizure of agricultural products was accompanied by repression
When in Ukraine is the memory of the victims of the famine? The date of this event was set by the Ukrainian president L. Kuchma and falls on the last Saturday of November (since 1998). Since 2000, this day has been honored not only the memory of the victims of the famine, but also the memory of the victims of repression, which in the 30s of the 20th century were very numerous throughout the former USSR. In particular, in the years 1932-1933, during the famine, the law “On Five Spikelets” was adopted, when for trying to starve people to find several stalks of grain on the field they could be shot (more than two thousand sentences were carried out) or sentenced (about 52,000 people). And all this happened against the background of mass seizure of agricultural products by the most inhuman methods. People were evicted, beaten, shot, frozen, buried waist-deep in pits, tortured, forced to drink water mixed with kerosene, destroyed at home, etc. About 593 tons of grain were obtained.
A huge variation in the assessment of the dead
The memory of the victims of the famine in all regions of many countries today is honored, as these were relatives of some living. And what is happening then should not be forgotten, because the events of those years were more than tragic. In Ukraine, in 1933, deaths in certain regions reached one hundred percent, up to 25 thousand died per day, and the total number of victims was, according to various estimates, from 4.6 million people (data from French researchers) to ten million (information from the US Congress, possibly , in the whole of the USSR). The exact figures are unlikely to be known once, since Soviet statistics have ceased to take into account the victims since April 1933, when their number approached 2.42 million people in Ukraine alone. In addition, it is estimated that during these years, one million Ukrainian babies were not born due to hunger.
Modern people should honor the victims of the famine. Photos of those terrible years are often shown to us by cannibals from different parts of the former USSR with the remains of their victims. In total, about 2500 episodes of cannibalism (murder for subsequent consumption in food) and eating the corpses of the dead were officially recorded (again, until April 1933) in Ukraine. Such events should not be repeated, especially since in modern reality hundreds of millions of people on the planet suffer and die from malnutrition.
The day of memory of the victims of the famines has now become partly a topic for speculation of various kinds. For example, President of Ukraine V. Yushchenko passed a law in which hunger in Ukraine (at that time) is considered genocide, and its public denial is punishable by law as an unlawful act aimed at humiliating the dignity of the Ukrainian nation, outrageous memory of millions of victims. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation believes that the recognition of hunger as genocide is one-sided, as not only Ukrainians, but also many other nationalities suffered.
Ukrainians simply honor the memory of the victims of the famine. 2014 was no exception for this - in many cities, relevant events were held with the laying of flowers at the monuments to the victims of this tragedy.
An additional version of the causes of high mortality in 1932-1933.
Unofficial studies of that difficult period of Soviet history recorded one rather curious fact - among the dead people there were a certain number of those who did not lose weight to a skeletal state from hunger, but, on the contrary, were very swollen. This is a feature of the famine of 1933, which does not occur either in 1921, or in 1946 lean years, or even in besieged Leningrad. Cases of swelling were found even in families with hidden food supplies, which, as suggested, indicates the ingestion of toxins in available food, as an option - of fungal origin. In particular, in those years, on the fields of all of Eastern Europe, such a disease of bread as “rust” was officially recorded, which affected up to half of the crop in some areas, including Ukraine. Therefore, it is possible that some people did not die of starvation, but from intoxications caused by the poor quality of the harvest, which does not detract from the general scale of this tragedy. The memory of the victims of the famine in Ukraine and other former republics of the USSR should be properly observed so that such events never happen again.