Competing Memories Of Communist And Nazi Crimes In Ukraine

international SEMINAR
To hide the Holodomor from the outside world the Soviet authorities barred bona
fide foreign journalists from the famine areas, and gave foreign writers and politicians
luxury tours of Potemkin style villages 1 . A few honest journalists and intellectuals did
report the truth 2 , but the Soviet Union and its admirers abroad attacked this testimony
as malicious propaganda against the proletarian state. Western governments were well
aware of what was happening in the USSR, and in Ukraine in particular 3 , but preferred
to keep silent because of the economic crises in their own countries. The International
Committee of the Red Cross, which helped publicize the 1921-1923 famine, made halfhearted
enquiries on behalf of the League of Nations, but its offer of aid was scorned and
rebuffed, as was that of other ad hoc relief organizations. Missing was an intervention from
the international Jewish community, similar to the one of 1921, when it played a key role
in opening Ukraine to Western aid and providing most of the relief funds 4 . There were
no foreigners to film the 1932-1933 famine as there had been for that of 1921-1923. On
the other hand, the belated publicity given to the famine by the Nazi media in Germany
and the Conservative press in the United States 5 did more to undermine its credibility
in the West than to secure it in Western conscience. The imperceptible amount of aid
that came from the West went to a few German and Jewish agricultural settlements and
some Ukrainians who received money vouchers through the Torgsin 6 . Soviet denial and
Western disinterest combined to prevent the Ukrainian tragedy from finding a place in
world history and making an impression on humanity’s consciousness.
Soviet authorities could not conceal the starvation of millions of its citizens from
the rest of its population, but it could force the latter to act in an oblivious way to it, and
later it could prevent the post-famine Soviet society from integrating the tragedy into its
collective memory. During the famine, Stalin never made any references to it in public,
and when he rebuked Roman Terekhov, the boss of the Kharkiv oblast’, in front of party
dignitaries for “inventing stories” about the famine, the gensec sent a clear message that
the famine did not exist. 7 Starvation could not be discussed in public, deaths could not be
recorded as famine-related, and no information or photographs of starving people could
appear in the papers. It did not mean that the party was ignorant of the stark reality, for
in addition to various euphemisms, the term was used in secret party and OGPU reports
and in communications between party leaders. Georgi Petrovsky, the nominal head of
the Ukrainian republic, and Vlas Chubar, the head of the Ukrainian government, mentioned
the famine when they pleaded with Moscow for reduction in grain procurement
for their republic, 8 and even Stalin used the term in a letter to Kaganovich, in reference
to Ukraine 9 . Typically, the famine appears in reports sent up the hierarchical ladder, but
not in instructions directed down the line of command.
Many factors made the population succumb to public myopia during the famine,
and accept general amnesia, after it was over. The Soviet mass media set the urban
population against the peasants by blaming the kulaks and their lackeys for selfishly withholding
agricultural products from the state and the undernourished industrial workers.
The destruction of Ukraine’s national elites removed the leadership necessary to lead
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