The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-11537, in the name of Marco Biagi, on marking the anniversary of the Ukrainian famine. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
I invite Kenneth Gibson to open the debate on behalf of Marco Biagi.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes the day of remembrance of the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, on 22 November 2014; further notes that conservative estimates place the number of mortalities in the millions; understands that many historians consider this an entirely avoidable tragedy and a deliberate act of genocide committed by the Stalin regime, and commends the work of campaigners in raising awareness of the Holodomor.
17:01
Thank you, Presiding Officer.
I am grateful to my colleague, Marco Biagi, who is sitting on my right, for securing time for this valuable debate, and I offer him my warmest congratulations on his recent promotion.
It is a solemn privilege to speak in this evening’s debate to mark international Holodomor memorial day, which is a subject that has fascinated and appalled me since I read Robert Conquest’s seminal work “The Harvest of Sorrow” back in 1986.
The term “Holodomor” literally means extermination by hunger. It refers to the deliberate actions of Joseph Stalin’s soviet regime to crush Ukrainian nationalism and the Ukrainian peasantry, which was perceived to be potentially hostile to Soviet power. The Holodomor ranks among the worst acts of genocide in human history. The death toll certainly exceeded the death toll of the Pol Pot-imposed genocide in 1970s Cambodia, and it potentially exceeded that of the Holocaust. Despite that, recognition, remembrance and understanding of what exactly happened are not as robust as they should be. It is for that reason that international Holodomor memorial day is so crucial in exposing one of the most callous and destructive acts of the 20th century.
The Holodomor was part of Stalin’s revolution from above. From 1932 to 1933, his regime inflicted a terror famine on the collectivised peasants of the Ukraine, the Kuban and other areas of high Ukrainian ethnicity. Grain quotas were set in rural Ukraine that the regime knew would be impossible to achieve. The land-owning peasants who were known as kulaks or fists were considered to be wealthy and exploitative but were often neither, although they were independent of mind, which meant that they were reluctant to collectivise and were targeted.
One of the aims of collectivisation in the Ukraine, as stated in Pravda was:
“The destruction of Ukrainian nationalism’s social base—the individual land holding.”
Cowing the peasants was a Stalinist objective. On 17 January 1933, Stalin said in Pravda:
“Today’s anti-Soviet elements are ... people who are ‘quiet’, ‘sweet’ and almost ‘holy’.”
He added that the kulak had been
“defeated but not completely exterminated”.
Despite the disastrous effects on productivity of the collectivisation that was introduced in 1929, Stalin raised Ukraine’s grain procurement quotas by 44 per cent, which meant that there was not enough food to feed the peasants, as the law required that no grain from a collective farm could be given to the members of the farm until the regime’s quota had been met. The quota often exceeded the total harvest, which meant that families were left with nothing to eat for the coming year.
Resistance resulted in execution or deportation to Siberia, and all available food was seized to sustain the well-fed squads of police and Communist party apparatchiks—many of whom had been sent from distant Russian cities—who oversaw and enforced such pitiless destruction of lives and communities.
The impact was catastrophic, as it was designed to be, and offers of food aid from overseas and other states within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were refused by the regime. Within a year, between a fifth and a quarter of Ukraine’s 25 million people lay dead or dying and the remainder were so debilitated that they were unable to work or even bury their loved ones.
While the backbone of the country—the nation’s peasants—were dying en masse, the Stalinist regime also targeted the cultural elite, the clergy and anyone else who was able to articulate or represent a sense of Ukraine as a distinct nation.
By the end of 1930, prior to the famine, 80 per cent of the country’s village churches had been closed and desecrated, with thousands of clergy shot or deported to gulags. Of Ukraine’s 240 authors, 200 disappeared. Of 84 leaders in linguistics, 62 were liquidated. The remainder of both groups were, understandably, cowed into silence and obedience. The Ukrainian theatre and Academy of Sciences also suffered and the local Communist party was purged of “nationalist deviation”. It is this evident and documented desire to wipe out Ukrainian national identity that so obviously points to an act of genocide and not simply an attack on the wider peasantry of the USSR.
Due to the wall of secrecy imposed by the former Soviet Union, it is difficult to know how many perished during the Holodomor, but recent research suggests that 3 million to 7.5 million may have died directly as a result of the Soviet-imposed famine in Ukraine. As Stalin himself is reported to have said, perhaps betraying his real view on mass murder,
“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”
It is true that, when discussing a crime of this magnitude, it is possible to lose sight of individual tragedies, and I would like to take the opportunity to attempt to convey, in a small way, the intense suffering experienced in Ukraine during this time.
As well as physical effects, starvation produced psychological symptoms, and murders, suicides and denunciations against friends and families were widespread. For example, in the village of Bilka, one man, Denys lschenko, killed his sister, his brother-in-law and their 16-year-old daughter in order to obtain 30 pounds of flour. The same man also murdered his friend when he saw him carrying four loaves of bread that he had managed to obtain from the city.
Others recounted stories of those who had gone insane, killing their own children and eating them. One mother who was arrested for such an act was described by those who witnessed her arrest as having a human face but the wild and staring eyes of a wolf. She was shot by the regime.
In his unpublished memoirs, the esteemed Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak, of “Dr Zhivago” fame, wrote about his experiences of travelling to Ukrainian collective farms in the early 1930s:
“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.”
The Holodomor was a man-made tragedy. It was a deliberate crime against humanity and it was entirely preventable. Not only were offers of international aid refused and impossibly high grain quotas imposed, but vital food supplies were allowed to rot in warehouses under armed guard for lack of transport to take them to the cities. The consequences for Ukrainian society, which bore much of the fighting and suffered horrific destruction following the Nazi invasion of 1941 and its aftermath, can only be imagined.
Although denial of the Holodomor by the Soviet regime, while it existed, was to be expected, there is no excuse for that now. To most minds, the documented evidence of Stalin’s loathing of Ukrainian nationalism, his views on the potential threat that it posed to his regime and his murderous attacks on Ukrainian culture and identity prove that the Holodomor was an act of genocide. I am disappointed that more nations and international organisations are not willing to recognise that fact, and I welcome the continued efforts by the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain and others to ensure that this crime is fully recognised and remembered.
A growing number of states—currently 25, including Canada, Australia, the United States of America and Poland—officially recognise the Holodomor as a deliberate act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. The European Parliament and the General Assembly of the United Nations have recognised the Ukrainian famine as a crime against humanity and a man-made tragedy, but both have stopped short of recognising it as an act of genocide. Despite a members’ debate in the House of Commons, the United Kingdom Government has also declined to do so.
As Robert Burns wrote in “Man was Made to Mourn”,
“Man’s inhumanity to Man
Makes countless thousands mourn!”
Few nations have suffered over the past century in the way that Ukraine has. I hope that, in this Parliament, we recognise that fact and the Holodomor in remembrance of so many innocent men, women and children who died.
17:09
I, too, congratulate Marco Biagi on his new job and on securing this important debate, and I thank Kenny Gibson for standing in for him so well.
The vast famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933, which is known as the Holodomor, is a very sensitive and sobering issue. This past Sunday, Ukraine remembered those who died during that dark chapter in Ukrainian history 81 years ago.
The event would probably have been hidden away in a dusty corner of the vast archives of the Soviet empire had it not been for Gareth Jones, a brave Welshman. He was a journalist and an adviser to David Lloyd George who travelled to the Ukraine when whispers of a horrendous famine started to emerge. He defied the authorities, which did not allow any journalists in the region, and ventured into what he described as
“once the richest farmland in Russia”,
which had become a desert.
The sight that met him was indeed gruesome. Corpses were lying in the streets and people were so starved that they could not be recognised as human beings. The country was enmeshed in deep despair. He exposed that to the world and was consequently banned from returning by the Soviet Union, which branded him a liar. His life came to a brutal end when he was murdered in the far east a few years later. As the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom once described him, he is an “unsung hero of Ukraine”.
Famine was not rare in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s as a result of policies that were inherently doomed to fail with disastrous consequences. The Holodomor in particular was a tragedy, as the Soviet Government did not allow any western aid nor any policies that would have helped to relieve the situation. That was contrary to the previous approach that was adopted to famines in Russia. Unfortunately, many people back then and today have seen that approach as a way to physically weaken the concept of Ukrainian nationality.
Last year, the Euromaidan protests started and the Ukrainian nation rose to show its will for freedom and the desire to shake off Russia’s dominance, and to prove its ability to chart its own course. Thousands of people have died in Ukraine this year, and its borders have been violated as Crimea was illegally annexed. Eastern regions were almost destroyed and lost their remaining economic viability, and people of the Donbas are left without water, electricity and food.
That is not a new Holodomor and is not equal to it, but it is paramount that we continue to act with a sense of urgency. A message of unanimity against the Russian actions and unity with the Ukrainians was sent at the G20 summit; that summit is now over but, unfortunately, the war in Ukraine is not.
Between 3 million and 7 million Ukrainians died during the famine. Many were Ukrainian country people—women and children. They were told to hand over their land in favour of collective farms as part of Stalin’s communist totalitarian utopia, but they refused to comply. The people were asked to abandon their church in favour of atheism and they resisted. Hard-working Ukrainian farmers wanted a chance at prosperity and were told that they had to give up everything that they had. They resisted, but they faced a horrible destiny: a long, drawn-out death by starvation.
We should also not forget Ukraine’s kurkuls—known as kulaks in the other parts of the Soviet Union—who were the relatively affluent farmer class whom Stalin declared he wanted to eliminate. The overwhelming majority of them were executed, sent to gulag camps or imprisoned. Many historians believe that removal of those experienced land managers made the famine even worse. There were centralised policies—for example, people were told from the centre to make hay when it was raining. Things were as bad as that.
We should never allow the world to forget the atrocities that were committed by the communist regime of the Soviet Union, and they should never be allowed to happen again.
17:14
I thank Marco Biagi for lodging the motion and congratulate him on his recent appointment. I look forward to working with him in the Scottish Government. I also thank Kenneth Gibson for leading the debate and both members for securing this evening’s debate. I am in no doubt that by securing the debate they have promoted greater understanding of the Holodomor and the magnitude of its impact in Ukraine and on the Ukrainian people.
I want to reflect on Kenneth Gibson’s words and how we all have a duty to face man’s capacity to be inhuman on such a horrendous scale. Robert Burns captured that capacity when he wrote
“Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!”
We also have an international obligation to recognise the horror that that brings with it.
The Holodomor was a horrific man-made tragedy on an unimaginable scale. It serves as an important reminder of the inhumanity and cruelty that can exist in this world. The pain and suffering of the Ukrainian people must never be forgotten.
The famine, which took place between 1932 and 1933, was the culmination of events which began in 1929 when the Soviets imposed fatal deportation orders on Ukraine’s prospering farmers, as well as the deportation and execution of academic, religious and cultural leaders. The famine was directly caused by the policies of the Soviet Government. The authorities mercilessly seized grain from the Soviet Union’s agricultural regions in order to feed the country’s rapidly expanding urban workforce. Jamie McGrigor talked about Gareth Jones and contemporary observation in reflecting the sheer cruelty of what that meant.
At the height of the famine, 25,000 Ukrainians were dying every day. That the Soviets chose not to put an end to such horror when they had the ability to do so is inexplicable and a gross violation of human rights. It is estimated that between 3 million and 10 million people died. The majority of the deaths were in Ukraine.
For years, the tragedy was overlooked by the western world. It has also been inexplicably denied by others. However, the memory of this horrific event was kept alive by Ukrainians inside the country and their diaspora around the world. The efforts of those people, as well as many historians, have allowed the world to remember those who lost their lives and reflect on the lesson from history that the Holodomor provides for us.
I am proud that Parliament is debating this event here today. In doing so, we are raising awareness of a horrific and regrettable event in history that must not be forgotten. There is no doubt that the famine occurred and was brought about by Stalin and his Government’s actions. It is completely unfathomable to me that a leader who was responsible for the people who were living under the Soviet regime could proceed with policies that would clearly have such devastating effects on the people of Ukraine.
The main goal of the famine was to break the resistance of the Ukrainian peasants and force them to collectivise. I do not think that any reasonable man or woman, with any shred of humanity, would say that the end justified the means. It is clear that the Soviet regime was deeply resentful of any form of Ukrainian nationalism. There are numerous examples of how Stalin’s policies were disproportionately hostile towards Ukraine. The fact that, during the famine, Stalin closed the eastern border of Ukraine to prevent starving peasants from entering Russia in search of food is a clear illustration of that.
On the substance of one element of the motion, members will be aware that foreign affairs are, of course, a matter reserved to the United Kingdom Government. The UK Government’s policy is that the recognition of genocides is a matter for judicial decision under the terms of the 1948 United Nations genocide convention. The Holodomor predates the establishment of the concept of genocide in international law, and the convention was not drafted to apply retrospectively.
That said, the events of the Holodomor are a tragic example of man’s inhumanity and act as a reminder that Scotland’s strong and enduring commitment to human rights cannot be taken for granted. That places a responsibility on us, as a nation, to ensure that other countries develop and maintain a similar commitment. The Scottish Government uses our international engagement as an opportunity to help to increase respect for and understanding of human rights worldwide.
I want to reflect on the contribution that the Ukrainian community has made to Scotland. I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Ukrainian community centre in Edinburgh where I learnt about the rich culture and traditions that the community brought with them to Scotland. The community centre has a wonderful collection of materials that relate to the community’s history in Scotland, and the Scottish Government is working closely with the centre so that those resources can be displayed to the public and used to promote wider awareness of the Ukrainian community’s contribution to this nation.
I add my voice and the voice of the Scottish Government to those welcoming the Ukrainian community to our and their Parliament. Humanity knows no boundaries, national or otherwise, and we should be together in recognising our sense of history, just and unjust. There is no question in my mind but that the people of Ukraine were the victims of the most unspeakable offences, perpetrated by a vicious regime that had no hesitation in committing crimes against humanity, all for the sake of an ideology.
The debate is about remembering those who were subjected to such inhumanity and indignity through no fault of their own. The Holodomor is a tragedy of epic proportions. A ruthless dictatorship with a heartless ideology caused the deaths of many millions of innocent people.
Presiding Officer, I have been invited by the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain to attend the event to remember the Holodomor this Saturday in Edinburgh. In attending on behalf of the Scottish Government, I will speak for the people of Scotland when I say that we must remember and we must never forget.
Meeting closed at 17:20.Previous
Decision Time