Valentyn Moroz
An indicative feature of the mass media's portrayal of
modern history is the striking contrast between the heavy volume of
"Holocaust" material and the silent treatment given to the appalling
record of Soviet mass slaughter, even though the number of Stalin's victims
alone vastly exceeds even the most exaggerated figures of alleged
"Holocaust" victims. While names like Auschwitz, Buchenwald and
Dachau have been unforgettably engraved into our collective consciousness, few
Americans recognize Vorkuta, Kolyma, or any of the many other Soviet camps
where at least twenty million people are conservatively estimated to have
perished. And whereas Americans have been taught to instantly recognize the
name of Heinrich Himmler, hardly anyone has heard of Soviet secret police
chiefs Nikolai Yezhov or Genrikh Yagoda, each of whom murdered many more
people, and in less time, than Himmler is reputed to have killed.
The gruesome record is well
documented. Nobel prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has detailed the
horrors of the Soviet concentration camp system, which held up to fifteen
million prisoners at a time. In The Great Terror, British historian
Robert Conquest cautiously estimated the number of Stalin's political victims
at 20 to 30 million. (Stalin once privately admitted to Churchill that some ten
million kulaks had been killed for resisting the confiscation of their farms.)
In Stallin's Secret War, Nikolai Tolstoy exposes as a fraud the official
Soviet claim, widely parroted by the Western media, that 20 million Soviet
citizens were killed by the Axis during the Second World War. Tolstoy
demonstrates that most of those 20 million were actually victims of the Soviet
regime. Russian historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko estimates in A Time of
Stalin that the Soviet rulers have killed more than eighty million of their
own people to keep themselves in power.
Stalin's single most horrific
campaign was perhaps the organized mass starvation of 1932-1933, which he used
as a weapon to totally crush peasant resistance to the forced collectivization
of agriculture. Soviet military units confiscated all available food in vast
areas, condemning the inhabitants to death by hunger. As Conquest points out,
this is perhaps the only case in history of a purely man-made famine. He
estimates that the campaign claimed five to six million lives, including more
than three million Ukrainians. Other historians have put the number of
Ukrainian famine victims at six or even seven million. An important new work on
this subject is Miron Dolot's moving memoir, Execution by Hunger: The Hidden
Holocaust, which includes a valuable introduction by Adam Ulam.
In the following essay,
Ukrainian historian Valentyn Moroz dissects the origins of the imposed famine
of 1932-1933. He takes exception to the generally accepted view that the
campaign was carried out for purely socio-economic reasons, and holds instead
that the decisive motivation was Moscow's need to maintain the multi-national
Soviet Russian empire. Stalin destroyed the independent Ukrainian peasantry,
Moroz writes, because it was the foundation and lifespring of Ukrainian
nationalism.
-- Mark Weber
In 1921, at the Tenth Congress
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it was resolved that the country's
non-Russian nations (nationalities) required assistance. / 1
a) to
develop and strengthen locally Soviet statehood in such forms as are applicable
to the national and social conditions of these nations;
b) to
develop and strengthen locally, in their native languages, the legal system,
administrative and economic organs, and government organs, consisting of local
people who are acquainted with the living conditions and mentality of the local
population;
c) to
develop locally the press, schools, the theater, social clubs, and all cultural
and educational institutions in their native languages;
d) to create
and develop a wide spectrum of courses and education institutions in both the
humanities and the technical and professional fields in their native languages
...
Thus began the policy known as
"korenizatsiia" or "return to the roots," which is an
instructive and very interesting phenomenon in the history of the modern
Russian empire. In Ukraine this policy became known as
"ukrainizatsiia" or "Ukrainianization." In fact, this term
was widely used in official documents during the 1920s. The Edict of 1923
described Ukrainianization with these words. / 2
... The
people's government acknowledges the necessity ... of concentrating the
attention of the state in the near future on broadening the knowledge of the
Ukrainian language. The formal equality of the two most widely used languages
-- Ukrainian and Russian -- has so far been insufficient. The processes of
life, as experience has indicated, in reality favor the predominance of
Russian. To remove this inequality the government will implement a series of
practical measures which, while guaranteeing the equality of every language
used on Ukrainian territory, must safeguard a position for Ukrainian
corresponding to the size and strength of the Ukrainian nation on the territory
of the Ukrainian nation on the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
These days there is a tendency
to regard this policy of Ukrainianization as a tactical ploy by Moscow to
expose and destroy all patriotic Ukrainians. This is an extreme view.
Obviously, Moscow had tactical considerations in introducing this policy. But
it should be understood that Moscow was forced to adopt this policy. The
impulse behind Ukrainianization came from far beyond the walls of the Kremlin
and emerged from quite different sources.
The Revolution of 1917
stimulated a powerful renaissance among the non-Russian nations of the Russian
empire, and this process continued even after these peoples were militarily
subdued by the Soviet Russian forces. National development found means of
self-expression even under the conditions of Soviet rule. While the facts and
figures of the expansion of Ukrainainization are of interest for their own
sake, even more interesting is the story of how the people involved found the
means of carrying out this process of national development under the conditions
of totalitarian one-party rule. This was possible because a kind of second
political party, which was never proclaimed and formalized as such, existed
during the 1920s. This alternate party was private enterprise.
The Tenth Congress of the
Communist Party symbolically announced the introduction of the "new
economic policy" or NEP in 1921 and shortly thereafter was also forced to
proclaim the "korenizatsiia" policy of a return to native roots. New
opportunities for private enterprise in economic life automatically also
brought about a national renaissance among the non-Russian peoples. The
"new economic policy" (NEP) not only meant a total change in economic
life but in social and cultural life as a whole. Private entrepreneurs began
demolishing totalitarianism in countless different ways. A shop owner operating
his own business or a doctor with his own practice quickly became independent
of the commissar with the red cloth on his table. They were soon also regarded
as socially higher. And although these entrepreneurs had to recite the
Communist slogans and jargon whenever required, the free market and not the
Party came to govern their lives. Like the legendary genie suddenly released
from his bottle, free enterprise spread swiftly.
This meant that, in practice,
life became pluralistic, despite the protests of orthodox Communists concerned
about the purity of party doctrine. And all this gave subconscious moral
strength to the national movements. One felt able to "breathe" and
express oneself at last. In Ukraine many associations of artists and writers
were formed. An innovative and experimental theatrical life began to develop.
In such conditions it was natural that legally sanctioned competition between
the Ukrainian and Russian national influences would eventually develop. Among
those who recognized this was Dmytro Lebed, who coined the theory of the
"struggle between two cultures" in which the state should not
intervene.
From the outset the Russians
regarded Ukrainianization as a temporary political phenomenon, and accordingly
sought to make it a purely formal letter, not to be taken seriously. For
example, during a certain party conference an economic administrator from an
outlying district, after listening to resolutions on the necessity of having
administrators use Ukrainian in their official work, began speaking to his
district director in Ukrainian. To this the official replied in Russian:
"Speak like a human being!" But despite such resistance, a virtual
army of patriotic Ukrainian academics and other culturally and politically
active individuals greatly furthered the process of Ukrainianization.
Supporters of this process of national renaissance came into high and sometimes
even key positions. Because of Russian chauvinist resistance, Ukrainianization
didn't really begun to develop until 1925. A 1927 letter from the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine to the Communist International
(Comintern) dealt with numerous "distortions" regarding the
Ukrainianization process. / 3
These
distortions lie in the ignoring of and failure to value adequately the national
question in Ukraine (which is frequently masked by internationalist phrases),
particularly:
1) in the
belittling of Ukraine's significance as a part of the USSR, in the attempt to
interpret the creation of the USSR as the actual liquidation of the national
republics;
2) in the
instruction that the party remain neutral toward the development of Ukrainian
culture, in the interpretation of it as backward and "rural" compared
to Russian "proletarian" culture;
3) in the
attempt to maintain at all costs the dominance of the Russian language in the
governmental, social, and cultural life of Ukraine;
4) in the
formalistic attitude towards the development of Ukrainianization, which is
often accepted only theoretically;
5) in the
uncritical repetition of chauvinistic and imperialistic views about the
so-called artificiality of Ukrainianization, the unintelligibility of the
"Galician" language for the nation, and so forth, and in cultivation
of these views within the party;
6) in the
attempt to hinder the implementation of the policies of Ukrainianization in the
towns and among the proletariat, confining it only to the villages;
7) in the
frequent tendency to exaggerate isolated cases of distortion in the
implementation of Ukrainianization, and in the attempt to portray these as an
entire political system which violates the rights of national minorities
(Russians, Jews, etc.).
It was characteristic of the
time that the Communist Party of Ukraine could bypass the Central Committee in
Russia and appeal directly to the Communist International, even though it was
still a part of the all-encompassing "Soviet" Communist party. This
is another indication of the pluralism and national self-expression which de
facto manifested itself under conditions of Soviet rule, despite and in
opposition to totalitarian doctrine.
The record shows that
Ukrainianization was an important and very real development. Its impact may be
compared to a torpedo exploding a dangerously threatening hole in the hull of
the imperial ship of state. Millions of Ukrainian children were now being
taught in Ukrainian. This was something for which several generations of
Ukrainians had fought. In 1930 an astonishing 89 percent of the books published
in Ukraine were printed in the Ukrainian language. That same year, the Eleventh
Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine reported. / 4
... A
turbulent increase in Ukrainianization is apparent among the proletariat,
particularly among its chief groups. Along with this there is an indisputable
and systematic increase in the number of Ukrainians in the proletariat ....
During the past three years the number of people who can read, write, and speak
in Ukrainian has greatly increased .... The professional associations of
Ukraine should take it upon themselves, as leaders of the masses, to ensure the
availability of cultural services in Ukrainian for the working masses and also
to make certain that the movement inspires the workers towards cultural and
national development ....
These three
elements -- the schools, the press, and the Ukrainianization of the proletariat
-- are a strong base which will guarantee a rapid and unprecedented development
of a Ukrainian culture which is national in form and proletarian in content.
All this created unease in
Moscow, where it was understood that the continuation of this process would
eventually mean the end of Russian hegemony in Ukraine. Two tendencies became
apparent during the years of Ukrainianization that raised ominous questions
about the future of the Russian empire.
Firstly, the major role of the
village in the process of Ukrainianization became obvious. The village had long
been recognized as the conserving bastion of national traditions. But now it was
also clearly a powerful impetus for Ukrainianization in the towns and cities as
well. The most talented Ukrainian national authors and cultural leaders of the
1920s were from the villages, which provided a solid base of some forty million
people for the development of Ukrainianization. Ukrainian blood from the
villages flowed into the veins of new Ukrainian social and cultural
institutions developing in the cities. As these structures grew visibly
stronger it became increasingly evident that this powerful and turbulent stream
would eventually sweep aside all Russian influence. Joseph Stalin, the most
important Bolshevik theoretician on the national question, clearly understood
the crucial importance of the village in this process. In a speech to the Tenth
Soviet Communist Party Congress in 1921 he pointed out. / 5
It is
obvious that although the Russian element is still predominant in Ukrainian
cities, within a short period of time these cities will doubtlessly be
Ukrainianized. Forty years ago Riga was a German city, but because the village
population moves to the cities and determines their character, Riga is now a
Latvian city. Fifty years ago every city in Hungary had a German character, but
now each is Hungarian. The same can be said for the cities of Ukraine because
the village population will move to the cities. The village is the
representative of the Ukrainian language and this language will penetrate every
Ukrainian city and there become the dominant language.
Secondly, a clear distinction developed
between archaic and modern nationalism. The first could express itself only in
traditional and limited forms. It was thus able to co-exist for many years
within a colonial structure, within the framework of an alien empire, and
dominated by a foreign dynasty. In contrast, the modern form of nationalism was
aggressive and dynamic, intolerant of colonial structures and inclined to
demolish them. It was characterized by an alliance of the village and a
national intelligentsia which emerged from native ethnic roots. (This modern
form of nationalism brought down the European colonial empires in Asia and
Africa during the 1940s and 1950s, and was accompanied by major conflicts and
social upheaval.)
The process of
Ukrainianization during the 1920s gave birth to a concept that had the
potential of becoming an umbrella or screen behind which meaningful Ukrainian
nationalism could develop under the new conditions of Soviet rule. This concept
was best formulated by the writer Mykola Khvyloviy, who coined the slogans
"Away from Russia!" and "We can do without a Russian
conductor." Even the titles of his essays (such as "Russian Slops'')
convey the new atmosphere and direction that emerged from Ukrainianization.
With this concept, Ukrainian cultural, social and even political development
could be furthered using acceptable "proletarian" jargon. In his
polemical dispute with Russian newspapers, Khvyloviy wrote. / 6
Today, as
Ukrainian poetry follows its own direction, Moscow is no longer able to tempt
it with baubles .... And this is not because this or that Ukrainian participant
in the dispute is more talented than this or that Russian (God forbid!) but
because the Ukrainian reality is more complex than the Russian, because we have
before us different tasks, because we are the young class of a young nation,
because our literature is young ....
Because our
literature has at last found its own path of development, the question now lies
before us: Which of the world's literatures should we follow? In any case, not
Russian literature. That is absolutely crucial. We must not confuse our
political union with literature. Ukrainian poetry must move away from Russian
literature and its influence as soon as possible. The Poles would never have
given us Mickiewicz if their orientation towards Russian art had not ceased.
The fact is that Russian literature has been weighing us down for centuries,
like a master who has trained our mentality into slave-like imitation. So, to
feed our young art with Russian literature is to restrain its development. We
are aware of proletarian ideas without the help of Russian art. To the
contrary, we, as representatives of a young nation, will more easily sense
these ideas and will more quickly recreate them in suitable works of art. We
will orient ourselves towards western European art, toward its style and
methods.
We have philosophized
enough. Let us at last use our guide. We do so not with the intention of
harnassing our art to yet another foreign wagon, but in order to free it from
the suffocating atmosphere of backwardness. We will go to Europe to learn, but
in a few years we will return burning with a new light. Do you hear what we
want, Moscow-lovers with your Russian slops? So, death to the Dostoyevskys! Let
us begin a cultural renaissance!
It is also characteristic of
the time that Khvyloviy came from a Russified milieu. This itself was his
inspiration. Khvyloviy, who had been named Fitilov, knew from personal
experience the swamp-like world of Russified Ukrainians. He thus knew best how
to fight against it. The most effective preacher is a Saul converted into a
Paul.
As Moscow watched, new
institutions were developing that were both Communist and Ukrainian. Along with
others, Khvyloviy exclaimed: "We are aware of proletarian ideas without
the help of Russian art." The next and inevitable stage in the realization
of the slogan "Away from Russia!" would have been the political
separation of Ukraine from Russia. And that would have meant the collapse of
the Russian empire. As everyone realized, Russia without Ukraine would
automatically be reduced to the small realm (khanate) of Moscovy it had once
been in the 16th century before Tsar Peter I.
The successful development of
Ukrainianization (and of parallel national developments in other Soviet
republics) was not limited to literary life. The non-Russian nations of the
USSR chalked up other important achievements that threatened Russian hegemony.
One was the establishment of "native" (territorial) armies. Out of a
total of 17 army divisions based in Ukraine in the late 1920s, eight were
"native" divisions consisting almost entirely of Ukrainians. These
divisions also used Ukrainian as the language of communication and military
command. Ukrainian was also the language of instruction in some military
schools. Other non-Russian peoples had similar military formations. There were
two Byelorussian divisions, two Georgian, and one Armenian, as well as one
Tatar regiment, one Tadzhik regiment, and so forth. National non-Russian
educational systems also developed. Under the direction of the Ukrainian
minister of education, Hryhory Hrynko, an educational system developed in
Ukraine that differed in every way from the Russian form. In economic life
Volobuyev introduced the concept by which Ukraine would develop a national
economy separate from Russia. And so it went in every sphere of Ukrainian life.
Moscow understood that if this
process was allowed to continue for another decade the Soviet Russian empire
would break up along national lines, much as the Austro-Hungarian empire had at
the end of the First World War. The Kremlin rulers realized another essential
reality: the empire could only be held together with totalitarianism. And that
meant totalitarianism in every sphere of life. Only absolute state power could
guarantee a unified empire. Although Russian chauvinistic opposition to the
Ukrainian renaissance never completely disappeared, it was ineffective during
the 1920s for two reasons. Firstly, private enterprise automatically brought
with it pluralism in other spheres of life. It was comparable to fresh rain
falling on the young shoots of the national movement. Secondly, the national
awakening unleashed by the revolution of 1917 burgeoned during the decade of
the 1920s.
The historical pendulum began
to swing in a different direction at the close of the 1920s. The energy of the
national renaissance was depleted, indicating the beginning of a decline. The
regrouped imperial forces sensed that the time had come to strike back. Their
revenge took three forms: 1. The elimination of private property in the
villages and the imposition of totalitarian agriculture in the form of the
collective farm ("kolhosp" or, in Russian, "kolkhoz"); 2.
The uprooting of private enterprise in industry and trade; 3. The annihilation
of pluralism in the arts. All cultural associations were replaced by unitary
cultural unions, one each for writers, artists, journalists, and so forth.
The crucial essence of this
program was the annihilation of the traditional village structure, which had
always been the nation's foundation. Stalin recognized the key role of the
village in the movement for national liberation. "The village is the major
army in a national movement," he wrote. "Without the village the
movement becomes impossible. This is what we mean when we say that the national
question is, in effect, the village question. / 7
In planning the artificial
famine of 1933, Moscow sought to strike a fatal blow at the village structure,
not because it was socially troublesome or economically disadvantageous, but
because it was the lifespring and resource foundation of the vital national
spirit. Postishev, who was sent to Ukraine in 1933 as Moscow's plenipotentiary,
stated this clearly: "The mistakes and oversight of the Communist Party of
Ukraine in the realization of the nationalities policy of the party was one of
the major reasons for the collapse of agriculture in l931-1932." / 8
This one sentence is enough to
show that the national question triggered the catastrophe of 1933. The Plenum
in 1933 and the Twelfth Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine in January 1934
both declared that "the greatest danger in Ukraine is local Ukrainian
nationalism. / 9 This marked a turning point in the Kremlin's nationalities
policy. Until then the greatest danger in the nationalities question was
officially "Russian imperialistic chauvinism." At the Twelfth
Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Postishev declared that "1933
was the year of the defeat of Ukrainian nationalist counter-revolution." /
10 Moscow thus regarded the catastrophe of 1933 as an aspect of the struggle against
Ukrainian national renaissance. The village and national aspects of this
catastrophe were closely interconnected.
In the spring of 1933, when
millions of Ukrainian villagers were starving to death, Soviet forces carried
out mass executions across Ukraine. Two population groups were targeted for
extermination: the intelligentsia and Ukrainain Communists who had once
belonged to other parties. The census figures of 1926 and 1939 indicate that
the Ukrainian population decreased by ten percent during this period, while the
number of Russians increased by 27 percent. / 11 The reason for this startling
contrast was explained by a witness of the 1933 famine: "There were two
villages on the border between the Ukrainain Soviet Socialist Revublic and the
Russian Soviet Socialist Republic. On the Ukrainian side everything was taken
away, on the Russian side there were normal corn [grain] taxes and everything
went according to plan. The Ukrainians climbed onto the roofs of passing trains
and traveled to Russia to buy bread." / 12
Historians have concluded that
Ukraine lost 80 percent of its creative intelligentsia during the decade of the
1930s. / 13 Thus, Ukrainian culture suffered even more acutely than Ukrainian
village life. While 80 percent of the books published in Ukraine in 1930 were
printed in Ukrainian, in 1934 this figure had fallen to only 59 percent. / 14
At the Eleventh Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1930 there was
talk of "the turbulent rise of Ukrainialization" and of the necessity
for its continuation. In 1934, at the Twelfth Congress quite a different tone
prevailed. /15
Before the
November Plenum alone, 248 counter-revolutionaries, nationalists, spies and
class enemies -- among them 48 enemies who were party members -- were exposed
and expelled from Ukrainian research institutes and the Ministry of Education.
Since then, many more of these people have been unmasked. For example, not long
ago, in December, we were compelled to close down the Bahaliy Research
Institute of History and Culture because we discovered that this institute,
like numerous other academic organizations (such as the Ukrainian Soviet
Encyclopaedia and the Shevchenko Institute where Pylypenko was administrator),
was a nest of counter-revolution.
A key question in this entire
issue is this: To what extent were the repressions of the 1930s carried out for
socio-economic reasons? Certainly, the social and economic motivations behind
this policy of repression cannot be ignored or overlooked. But these
motivations must be understood within historical context. Although these
repressions were social in application, they were carried out primarily to
preserve Russian imperial power.
The central thesis of this
essay is that socio-economic considerations played only an instrumental and
auxiliary role in the policy of repression of the 1930s. The drastic
socio-economic changes of this period were motivated primarily by the desire to
maintain Russian imperial hegemony, and only secondarily by economic
considerations. In the struggle between orthodox dogmatists and pragmatists
within the Communist party in the early 1930s, the defenders of doctrine were
victorious. At the same time, however, the momentum of their attack against the
pragmatists gave them their imperialistic and chauvinistic impulse.
The history of the Soviet
system until the Second World War is normally divided into three phases: 1.
Military Communism, 1917-1921; 2. Temporary tactical retreat in the form of the
New Economic Policy, 1921-1929; 3. Further development of Communism according
to Marxist doctrine, from 1929. However, few historians have considered that
the characteristics of the third phase are hardly pragmatic.
I would describe these three
phases somewhat differently. The first phase may be called a naive Communist
experiment. During this period of "military Communism" the principle
of private enterprise was totally extinguished. The new Soviet state
confiscated as much of the villagers' production as it desired. (In practice
this was usually as much as it could find.) A black market operated, and
without it life could not have continued, even though officially it was illegal
even to sell one's own shoes. The economy quickly fell into chaos. Suffice it
to mention that only one blast furnace was functioning in Ukraine in 1921.
It was obvious that this
"pure Communism" would soon result in the total collapse of the new
system unless the new Soviet rulers recovered quickly from their
"orthodox" intoxication. The abrupt turn to pragmatism in 1921 proved
effective. This NEP phase permitted extensive private enterprise in agriculture
and other aspects of economic life. It ended in 1929 with a sharp return to the
collectivized system. This change has been generally regarded as a return to
Marxist orthodoxy after a temporary retreat. However, this view is erroneous.
The socio-economic policy of the 1930s was not a return to "pure"
Communist orthodoxy. It was rather a synthesis of the principle of
collectivization and pragmatism dictated by exclusively imperial interests.
The Communism described in
Marx's Das Kapital is not realistic. As with any ideology, Communism in
practice must take into consideration concrete national interests. The first
Soviet phase of "military Communism" was only an experiment. The new Soviet
rulers believed that the mythical "world revolution" and the utopian
ideal of Communism would quickly usher in a worldwide proletarian paradise.
These fantasies utterly ignored national considerations. The second NEP phase
was a concession forced by individualistic and national factors. Only in the
third phase was Communism integrated with Russian national interests. Marxist
doctrine was adapted to the needs of the "Third Rome" (Moscow). (A
similar process occured in China. After a series of uprooting experiments, a
variant form of Communism was finally developed that might successfully serve
Chinese imperial interests.)
A careful study of the Soviet
collective farm system makes clear that it is not consistent with pure
Communist doctrine. While the land and all agricultural implements are group
property, houses, gardens, chickens, pigs, cows and many other items remained
the property of individual villagers. In urban areas individuals continue to
own such basic items as homes, holiday houses, and automobiles.
Beginning with the Stalin era,
the Soviet system has been characterized by an ongoing combination of the
collectivization principle and pragmatism. However, the nature of this
pragmatism is not at all economic. If economic considerations were paramount,
Moscow would long ago have disbanded the collective farms and reintroduced
private enterprise in economic life. The collective farm system has brought
Soviet agriculture to its knees, and the Soviet economy has still not recovered
from the chronic depression caused by Stalin's drastic experiments during the
1930s. Soviet pragmatism is thus dictated by imperial and not economic
interests. The relationship between the principle of collectivization and
pragmatism is adjusted according to the interests of the empire. The collective
farm worker category is not a socio-economic category as much as it an imperial
category, similar to the "colon" class of the late Roman era. If
villagers live according to the principles of individual self-reliance and
private enterprise, they maintain a vital national awareness. This
consciousness makes the collapse of any empire inevitable. Imperial
self-interest necessitates the destruction of the villagers' traditional way of
life. The villager is transformed into a "proletarian" who is neither
tied to his land nor to his national heritage. Such rootless people easily lose
touch with their native localities and migrate to the endless wastes of Siberia
or Kazakhstan -- from one end of the empire to the other -- in search of higher
wages. Moscow's intention has been to assimilate the non-Russian half of the
Soviet empire. It is also interesting to note that even during the worst
economic periods of Soviet rule, there has always been sufficient liquor
available in the stores. This is one Soviet product that has never been in
short supply. In destroying national consciousness, liquor has been as
important as official Soviet propaganda. It's not difficult to persuade a drunk
"proletarian" that as far as his national heritage is concerned
"What's the difference?".
The collective farms are
essential to the Soviet system, not because of Marxist economic doctrine
(Yugoslavia gets along without them), but to maintain the empire. It is the
Soviet Russian empire and not Communist orthodoxy that bans private enterprise.
This is a key fact in understanding the nature of the Soviet system.
Thus, economic principles are
ignored in favor of imperial interests. Not even the catastrophic economic
consequences of this policy induce Moscow to change. Accordingly, the orthodox
"purity" of Marxism has been abandoned. Of course, Soviet textbooks
and newspapers repetitiously insist that everything is advancing
"according to Marxist principles." But whoever has the patience to read
past the third page of Marx's Das Kapital (almost no one in the Soviet
Union has done so) realizes that the Kremlin ignores numerous Marxist
principles. One example is the notion of "the total collapse of
capitalism," which has not occured as Marx "scientifically"
predicted. Another is the Leninist thesis that the Soviet Union would not
require a standing army (only a limited "people's militia"), nor
secret diplomacy, and so forth. These things are never mentioned in the USSR.
While using Communist slogans for its own ends, the Soviet Russian empire has
simply discarded everything about Communism that might prove advantageous to
the non-Russian peoples.
The introduction of the
collectivization and industrialization programs at the end of the 1920s meant
that the empire once again held the reins of power tightly in its hands. During
the chaos of the revolution these reins were temporarily torn from its control.
State policy shifted in different directions during the 1920s in response to
various forces. But when Moscow recovered and fully realized the situation, it
once again adapted to the needs of the empire.
Although the impetus for the
repressions of the 1930s is widely considered to have been socio-economic,
often even by those who made policy, the real motivation behind the repression
was a subconscious and unexpressed need to preserve the imperial system. The
imperial instinct prompted the concrete social forms of the repression as well
as the kind of totalitarianism that could be effective during the 1930s. If
there had been no pressing imperial interests or Russian chauvinism, the
repressions of the 1930s would have been only a tenth as severe. This is shown
by comparing the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the Armenian massacre of
1915. Foreigners who were in Petrograd in late 1917 were astonished at how
little blood was shed in the Bolshevik seizure of power. When one class fights
another, many shots are fired but few people are killed. In contrast, an
estimated two million Armenians were slaughtered in 1915 in an effort by the
Turkish (Ottoman) empire to put an end to the Armenian national question. It is
estimated that one half of the Armenian nation was murdered.
These elementary analogies are
enough to show that the murder of seven million Ukrainians in 1933 could not
have been motivated by socio-economic or "class" reasons alone.
Conflicts claim millions of victims only in struggles between nations, as in
wars, colonial struggles, and so forth, when the national question is
paramount. Moscow needed a holocaust. The imposed famine of 1933 and the whole
range of repressive mass killings during the 1930s were an expression of the
empire's struggle for self-preservation. It was this instinct, and not the
economic doctrine of collectivization, that impelled the Kremlin to carry out
the horrors of the 1930s. No one can say how "real" socialist
economics are supposed to work in practice. For example, Sweden calls itself a
socialist society, and some regard it as a model of socialism. But Sweden has
never abolished private enterprise. And although Poland has been under complete
Soviet domination since 1945, collectivized agriculture has never been
introduced there.
An article entitled "The
Ethnocide of the Ukrainians in the USSR," signed by pseudonym Maksym
Sahaydak, appeared in 1974 in the underground journal Ukrainian News. After
quoting from Stalin's speech to the both Soviet Communist Party Congress of
1921, predicting that the cities of the Ukraine will inevitably become
Ukrainianized, the author concludes: "The invaders dreaded this as they
would an inferno, and they still dread it today. Bolshevik Moscow, headed by
'the father of all nations' (Stalin), did everything it could to stop the
Ukrainian city from becoming Ukrainianized. This was the central reason for the
famine in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933." / 16
From a historical perspective
the year 1933 in the history of the Russian empire is analogous to 1848 in the
Austrian empire, when the rulers in Vienna preserved the realm from dissolution
by taking effective measures to repress the centrifugal national movements.
This was the last great convulsion and the last effective effort for
self-preservation before the final earthquake in 1918 brought about the
collapse of the Habsburg empire.
Notes
1. KPSS v resoliutsiiach i postanovleniia sezdov,
konferentsii i plenumov TC (Moscow:
1954), Vol. 1, p. 559.
2. Entsycopediia Ukrainoznavstva (1949), Vol. 1(2), pp. 547-548.
3. Dva roky roboty. Zvit Tsentralnoho Komitetu KP (b) U. (Kharkiv [Kharkov]: 1927), pp. 57-58.
4. XI zyizd KP (b)U. Stenohrafichnyj zvit (Kharkiv: 1930), pp. 737-738.
5. X zyezd RKP(b). Stenohraficheskyj otchet (Moscow: 1963), p. 213.
6. Visti BUCVK
(dodatok "Kultura i pobut"), (1926).
7. I. Stalin, Marksysm i natsionalno-kolonialnyj
vopros (Moscow: 1935), p. 152.
8. Ukrainskyj zbirnyk (Munich:
1957), Vol. 9, p. 71
9. V.I. Hryshko, Ukrainskyj Ho1okost 1933 (1978),
p. 77.
10. Chrevonyj Shlach
(Kharkiv: 1934), 2-3, p. 165.
11. The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book (New York and Toronto: Dobrus, 1955), Vol. 2, p. 129.
12. I. M-ko (I. Maystrenko), Do 25 richiia holodu
1933-ho roku. (Munich: Vpered, 1958), 7(92), p. 1.
13. Entsyclopediia Ukrainoznavstva (Paris and New York: 1959), Vol. 3, p. 1050.
14. U. Lavrynenko, Rostriliane Vidrodzheniia
(Paris: 1959), p. 965.
15. XII zyizd KP (b)U. Stenohrafichnyi zvit (Kharkiv: 1934), p. 380.
16. Ukrainskyj Visnyk
(Paris: Smoloskyp, 1975, reprint), 7-8, pp. 50-51.
From The Journal of
Historical Review, Summer 1986 (Vol. 6, No. 2), pages 207 - 220. This paper
was first presented by the author at the Sixth IHR conference in February 1985,
in Anaheim, California.
About the Author
Valentyn Moroz, historian,
educator and author, has been a leading figure in the Ukrainian national
movement. During the Soviet era, he was a prominent anti-Communist dissident, a
stalwart fighter for human rights and national freedom, and a political
prisoner for 13 years in Soviet prisons and camps.
He was born in April 1936 in a
village in the Volyn region of western Ukraine. After studies at the University
of Lviv (Lvov), he worked as a secondary school teacher in his native region,
and he taught modern history at teacher’s colleges. He was arrested in
September 1965 on charges of “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda,” declared
guilty, and sentenced to four years in a labor camp with a strict regimen.
While in solitary confinement in a labor camp prison, he completed a lengthy
essay entitled Report from the Beria Reserve, which was smuggled out and
later published in the abroad. He was transferred to the central KGB prison in
Kyiv (Kiev) and then to the notorious Vladimir prison.
In 1969 Moroz was released,
but nine months later he was arrested again on a new charge of “anti-Soviet
agitation and propaganda.” He was sentenced in November 1970 to six years of
prison in strict isolation, to be followed by three years in a prison camp with
a strict regimen, and then five years of internal exile. During this new term
of imprisonment Moroz was treated harshly, and he went on several hunger
strikes in protest.
The severity of his treatment
prompted widespread protests, both within Soviet Ukraine and abroad. He and his
case received considerable international publicity, and protest demonstrations
on his behalf were held in front of Soviet embassies and consulates in the US
and Canada. It was largely in response to the international protest campaign
that Soviet authorities decided to release him. In April 1979, he was exiled to
the United States. He was released at JFK airport in New York, along with four
other dissidents, in exchange for two Soviet KGB agents.
Moroz then worked for a year
as a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Department of History. He
completed his Ph.D. in 1982 at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich. He and
his wife then made their home in Toronto, where he edited a Ukrainian journal
and worked as a radio journalist. He was also prolific contributor to numerous
Ukrainian periodicals in Canada and the US, and he lectured widely. In 1997 he
moved back to Ukraine, and since then has made his home in Lviv, where he has
been a university lecturer.
No comments:
Post a Comment