Holodomor
By: Jonathan Garcia
Events that lead to this?
Ukraine had declared itself independent during the Civil War, the Menshevik government was only defeated in 1919. The Bolsheviks wanted to subdue the Ukrainians (and the peasants in general) the peasant based Narodniki movement had been politically violent and radical from the 1860s to about 1905 they wanted to crush any lingering radicalism.
People involved
Ukrainian people, Joseph Stalin (leader of Soviet Union) , Viacheslav Molotov (head of the Council for People's Commissars of the USSR) ,Vsevolod Balytsky (head of the GPU the Soviet Union secret police at the time of the Holodomor)
How were people separated from society?
In the spring of 1933, the rural population of Ukraine was dying at a rate of 25,000 a day, half of them children. The land that was known worldwide as the breadbasket of Europe was being ravaged by a man-made famine of unprecedented scale.
Propaganda used to justify killings
Soviet campaign against "national deviations"
How did it end? How many died?
November 1933, the United States, president Franklin D. Roosevelt, chose to formally recognized Stalin's Communist government and also negotiated a sweeping new trade agreement. The pattern of denial in the West culminated with the admission of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations. Stalin's Five-Year Plans for the modernization of the Soviet Union depended largely on the purchase of massive amounts of manufactured goods and technology from Western nations. Those nations were unwilling to disrupt lucrative trade agreement with the Soviet Union in order to pursue the matter of the famine.
- More than 7 million deaths are counted in the end.
What can we learn ?
The Holodomor is a genocide that really isn't recognized and it really should be because of how many people died and the horrible actions that happened during this genocide.
How can we prevent it?
- Preventing mass atrocities requires political will first and foremost. We must speak up and demand that government leaders make the right choices to prevent and stop atrocities.
- Perpetrators of genocide and mass atrocities cannot succeed without the support of other governments and corporations. We follow the money and apply public pressure to shame and stop companies and governments that finance mass violence. We call to account any nation that would welcome or reward a perpetrator of mass atrocity.
- In April 2012, President Barack Obama announced a series of actions to ensure the United States is better able to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities. The landmark announcement came after years of pressure from activists and organizations working to ensure that the United States’ failure to adequately respond to past atrocities will not be repeated.