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The Holodomor Myth and the Global Food Crisis

  • Gearóid Ó Colmáin Gearóid Ó Colmáin
  • Source: Al Mayadeen
  • 15 Apr 2022 23:55
  • 8 Shares
8 Min Read

Despite the famine in Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union being caused partly by failed agricultural collectivization policies and the USSR trying to address it, it was the Union to blame, creating a myth that became the founding the story of Ukrainian nationalism; the Holodomor.

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  • The Holodomor Myth and the Global Food Crisis
    The Soviet government did much to alleviate famine in Ukraine, drastically reducing exports of grain and lifting procurements of grain from affected areas

One of the beliefs widespread among Ukrainian 'nationalists' is that the Soviet government deliberately starved the Ukrainian people during the 1930s, they have given a lofty term for this event: the Holodomor. The Holodomor is a lie. 

There is no evidence to back up the claim that the Soviet government deliberately starved millions of Ukrainians to death as a form of political reprisal. There is, on the contrary, considerable evidence to prove that famine occurred in many parts of the Soviet Union between 1932 and 1933. Kazakstan, the Volga region, and even parts of Siberia experienced famine at this time.

The Ukrainian Holodomor myth has been used against Russia by pseudo-nationalist thugs since the Cold War when MI6 agent and pseudo-historian Robert Conquest worked as a propagandist for the British 'Information Research Bureau', 

Conquest became the official historian of the USSR and was free to plant any story in the press that would attack or defame the Soviet Union.  Conquest never provided any sources for his claims, other than the statements of former Nazi collaborators and war criminals in exile in the United States and Canada.

Professor Mark Tauger is a historian from  West Virginia University. He's a world expert on agricultural history. He has conducted extensive research on the alleged Holodomor. His conclusion is that the claims of genocide are simply false. He shows, in fact, that the Soviet government did much to alleviate famine in Ukraine, drastically reducing exports of grain and lifting procurements of grain from affected areas.

Bad weather was a major factor in the harvest failure of 1932-33. Tauger does not try to defend the Soviet government. He believes that the famine was partly the failure of the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union.

Much of Professor Tuager's work on the Ukrainian famine can be read on the internet, and sources checked. He may be wrong. Stalin may really have had a plan to murder millions. But in the absence of any evidence, it is extremely unlikely.

But the absence of evidence is never evidence of absence for the historians of the Western liberal and conservative collectorate.

It is alarming just how popular the Holodomor myth has become in the West. From anti-Communist liberals to right-wing patriots, the Holodomor is now practically received opinion. 

Yet many dissidents in the West claim that officialdom wants to hide the Holodomor. Our 'communist' elites, they claim, don't want us to know about it.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For many decades now, the Holodomor has been regularly covered by the mendacious mainstream press from Le Monde to the Washington Post.  

The hypocrisy of right-wing dissidents

There are many right-wing historians and activists who contest crimes officially attributed to the Fascist and Nazi regimes of the 1930s and 40s. Many of those historians have been put in jail because their research did not corroborate the official state view. That alone tells you all you need to know about freedom of expression in Europe. You are free to express 'received' and state-sanctioned opinions and nothing else.

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But most of these 'far-right' historians and their readers have no problem accepting the mainstream view of the Holodomor. They do not seem to see the contradiction in the fact that the European Parliament, the Organisation for Security in Europe, and other globalist organizations have all publicly recognized the Holodomor, as a Stalinist genocide. It's a rather strange thing to do for a so-called 'communist' regime like the European Union, is it not?  

In fact, it is quite likely, now that 'saving Ukraine' has become the password for geopolitical correctness, But that doesn't seem to bother right-wing pundits of the Holodomor myth because complexity never counts for much among them. The psychopathology of history which views every disaster, injustice, and crime perpetrated in the USSR as ' part of Stalin's plan' is all too comfortable to be relinquished for such inconvenient things as facts.

French totalitarianism

The French are leading the rush to make all history a matter of jurisprudence. They've already famously passed laws on the Holocaust.  Here it must be admitted, that the Russians themselves have followed suit.

Since January 2017 it is a crime in France to question the official narrative of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Anyone accused of 'negationism' can go to prison for one year and be fined  45,000 Euro. The official view of the genocide is that Tutsis were the victims of Hutus and that the US failed to intervene to prevent mass slaughter. Historians such as Charles Onana and Bernard Lugan, however, contest this view. They say that Tutsi warriors trained by the CIA and Mossad invaded Rwanda from Uganda, in order to provide Western mining corporations access to resources.  The official view blames the French for helping the Hutu regime defend itself against the invaders. No respectable historian denies that genocide took place. What is in question is simply what exactly happened and who was responsible. The French government's view is now the American view; all other views are illegal. 

It was the official view, that is to say, the CIA's view which was used by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to develop the Responsibility-to-Protect doctrine, which allows for military intervention to prevent genocide. That doctrine was used by NATO to carpet bomb Libya in 2011 and has been invoked ever since, in the pursuit of Western imperial interests. Official histories are necessary for the manipulation of public perception, so necessary, in fact, that laws need to be passed criminalizing those who question them.

There was a major famine in Niger around the same time as the Soviet catastrophe. Most historians believe the French government didn't do enough to relieve that famine. In fact, many of their colonial policies may have contributed to it. But it has not yet become a legal issue. The court 'historian's have not dealt with it yet.

However, lawyers do sometimes have their utility. Take, for example, French lawyer P. Guiboud-Ribaud  who visited Soviet prisons in the 1930s and compared them with those in France. He wrote about his experience in his book Ou Va La Russie? 

His book was popular among leftists in the 1930s, who were interested in changing the social relations of production.

Guiboud-Ribaud's conclusion was that conditions in Soviet prisons and Gulags were better than in France. Perhaps his rare book should also be put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum of liberal orthodoxy. After all, it is rather unacceptable to hold that land of 'human rights' at this time may have had lower standards than good old Uncle Joe!

The coming Holodomor?

History should not become a political tool. If we are not allowed question the past, we will not be allowed question the present. That's what the legislators of history want. They want to use history to prop up the official ideology of the State.

French President Emmanuel Macron and American president Joe Biden have said that a global food crisis is approaching. We should not ignore the warnings.

The Holodomor myth will probably become a major issue this year, as global grain supplies dwindle as a result of the Ukraine war. The Holodomor myth will be used to9 prop up the West's latest psychopathology of geopolitical conflict: Putin the evil dictator.

But when food in the West becomes scarce, intelligent people will know who to blame: the global-warmist Malthusian elites who are obsessed with population reduction and control.

What if Ukraine became the cause of a truly horrific global famine? It would be so devastating that everyone would use a Ukrainian word to describe it -- the Holodomor.

What if, our leaders, to deflect attention from the fact that they caused the war in Ukraine - -and that they want to wipe out swathes of the global population -- began to preach incessantly about Stalin's Holodomor in order to blame Putin for global famine?

Turn off the TV and grow food. Because soon the world may learn the real meaning of that Ukrainian word.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Mayadeen’s editorial stance.
  • Soviet Union
  • Holodomor
  • famine
  • France
  • russ
  • Grain
  • Ukraine
Gearóid Ó Colmáin

Gearóid Ó Colmáin

Journalist and political analyst

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