The Holodomor has been recognized as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people and the fourth Saturday of every November has been officially proclaimed National Holodomor Memorial Day by the Government of Canada.
This display is prepared annually in partnership with Lyubov Zhyznomirska (Department of Political Science and Global Development Studies).
Ukraine remembers - the World acknowledges
The Holodomor claimed millions of lives in Ukraine and was one element of the genocidal assault by the communist regime to destroy the Ukrainian nation.
An independent Ukraine would have limited the Soviet Union’s geo-strategic aims to be a Eurasian empire. To ensure that an insubordinate Ukraine remained in the Soviet fold, the Stalinist communist regime, in a decade of terror from 1928-1938, launched attacks on the Ukrainian Church; the Ukrainian national, cultural, and political elites; and the socioeconomic fabric of the nation - the grain growers of the Ukrainian countryside – with famine.
Demographics: The estimates of human losses due to the Holodomor vary depending on methodologies, including land area considered (there were territories affected outside of Ukraine where ethnic Ukrainians were a majority) and time period (higher death rates continued into 1934). However, there is incontrovertible proof that the Holodomor resulted in the deliberate murder by starvation of millions of Ukrainians, a crippling blow to Ukraine’s demographics for many decades.
A most chilling feature of the Holodomor was the high death rate among children. In many Ukrainian regions, some two-thirds of children did not arrive at school in September 1933.
Psychological trauma: The Soviet regime denied there had been a famine, and any mention of it was forbidden. Families did not discuss it at home for fear of endangering their children or being accused of anti-Soviet propaganda. It is only in recent years that Ukraine has been able to begin to come to terms with the moral and psychological consequences of the trauma and its denial.
Power of disinformation: 1933
During the Holodomor, the Soviet Union imposed an information blockade, forbidding journalists and foreigners from traveling to affected areas. Soviet propaganda denied there was a famine and promoted the image of happy peasants on collective farms.
Media: The few journalists who were able to report about the Holodomor, including Malcolm Muggeridge, Gareth Jones and Rhea Clyman, could not break through the noise of the deniers, particularly the influential Walter Duranty of The New York Times.
Governments: Governments and the League of Nations, bowing to economic, diplomatic and political considerations, failed to take any measures to stop the genocide, despite worldwide demonstrations that began with an International Day of Mourning and Protest on October 29, 1933. In September 1933, the League of Nations discussed the Famine behind closed doors and directed petitioners to address organizations “of a purely non-political character.”
International aid organizations: Responding to international appeals for help, the International Red Cross offered assistance to the Soviet Alliance of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which declined all offers of aid, declaring that there was no famine.
The information blockade continued for more than fifty years after the Holodomor. Soviet authorities denied the Famine, and historians and researchers were not allowed access to Soviet relevant archives until the fall of the Soviet Union.
In Canada, the Holodomor has been recognized as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people and the fourth Saturday of every November has been officially proclaimed National Holodomor Memorial Day by the Government of Canada, the provincial governments of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, and numerous municipal authorities.
Prepared by Ukrainian Canadian Congress National Holodomor Awareness Committee
November 2021