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Koehler, Shikaloff, Woodhall

Castro

English

5-26-17

The Holodomor Genocide happened in Ukraine. It started out with Stalin. He had

created a 5 year plan that would eventually lead up to the Genocidal Famine. Stalin

stated that the independent-minded farmers and cultural freedoms in Ukraine were

threatening to the society. He ended up wiping out Ukraines independent church. Which

was called the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church. But then, all of the farmers

were in danger. Farmers made up over eighty percent of the population in Ukraine. So

something big had to be done to deal with them all, as Stalin put it.

As Stalin put his five year plan into play, he started out by giving all of the

farmers, massively high crop requisition quotas. They had to give up so much of their

food that they barely had any food for themselves. And Stalin new this. He did all this on

purpose for that specific reason. The sale of the grain was to pay for industrialization.

And this made it so the independent Ukrainian farmers had to give up most of their food.

And they then, had no money to plant more, and they eventually had to give up their

farms. But that is not all that they had to give up. They had to give up their private land,

they had to give up all of their equipment. And later on they eventually had to give up all

of their livestock. But they did all this, and they god no compensation for it.

However, there were some farmers who could hold up for themselves. They were

called the Kurkuls, and the leaders of them were threatened by the Soviet government.

And starting in 1929, they started being killed by the firing squads, or they got deported
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to concentration camps. And the soviet government proposed that anyone could lable

another as one of the Kurkuls, and if done so, the firing squads would eliminate them

almost immediately.

Later on, the soviets had secret police forces and other assassins that were went

to the reaining towns to take all the remaining grain by force. So all of the farmers had

to choose on whether they wanted to give up al of their food, and keep their lives, or die

trying to protect it. But then, the police forces were commanded to search through every

single house. Though they took the grain already, they were then commanded to take

every source of food that they could find. So the families could not survive the winter.

The Law of 5 years of Grain. This meant that anybody, of any age, steals any

produce at all, they would be killed immediately. And in January of 1933, all of the

borders were sealed. People could no longer go anywhere else to find any food. So

they were being starved. My source states that, To further ensure that

Ukrainian farmers did not leave their villages to seek food in

the cities, the Soviet government started a system of internal

passports, denied to farmers, so that they could not travel or

obtain a train ticket without permission. Those caught attempting

to flee to the cities or beyond Ukraines borders, where

conditions were better, were imprisoned or sent home to die. Over


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one-third of the villages in Ukraine and the Kuban (an area in

the Russian republic adjacent to Ukraine, where the population

was mostly Ukrainian) were put on a blacklist (chorna doshka)

for failing to meet grain quotas and were forbidden from

receiving any supplies. This was essentially a collective death

sentence for these villages. Settlers from Russia and Belarus

were later brought in to resettle these depopulated areas. So

even if you tried escaping, and go caught, the quote says how if you got sent home, it

was to die. So all of the soldiers knew exactly what they were doing and they knew

exactly how it was affecting everybody. They knew exactly what they were sending

everyone too, how could any human do that? Theres many other questions that people

have, like what are all the causes for the Holodomor genocide? The paragraph below

will tell you all the causes of the genocide.

Many historians, authors, school teachers, and other random people ask why this

genocide happen. Stalin's food famine was definitely a large cause of this. And later on,

the fall of the soviet union changed everything and made it so that the farmers could live

and thrive again, in peace and harmony with themselves.


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The way all of the starving happened, was by slowly being starved. They slowly

had their food taken, more and more, and that's how they got the word Holodomor. It's

used to describe the starvation of farmers and all of the assault that happened.

The soviet union ended up denying everything that happened. They said they

had no part in any of it, which is obviously very untrue. It happened in places that were

under their command and many people have done research that confirm that the Soviet

union was in charge of this Genocide.

Why would the Soviets deny being a part of the Holodomor Genocide, when it

was obvious that is was them? Well the answer to that question, is that, even though

the soviet union is no longer here, they would not want that to be known. Have it known

that you created and caused the death of millions of people? No nation would want that

to be talked about. So they tried to hide it from the history, but of course, it did not work

at all. Though the soviet union collapsed, the history of Holodomor is still upon us. And

we will forever respect the deaths of those who had their lives taken from them.

The term Holodomor refers to the starvation of millions of Ukrainians in 193233


as a result of Soviet policies. This assault occurred in the context of a campaign of
intimidation and arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, artists, religious leaders, and
political cadres, who were seen as a threat to Soviet ideological and state-building
aspirations. Between 1917 and 1921, Ukraine briefly became an independent country
and fought to retain its independence before succumbing to the Red Army and being
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incorporated into the Soviet Union. In the 1920s, Soviet central authorities, seeking the
support of the populace, allowed for some cultural autonomy through the policy known
as indigenization.

By the end of the 1920s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin decided to curtail Ukraines
cultural autonomy, launching the intimidation, arrest, imprisonment and execution of
thousands of Ukrainian intellectuals, church leaders, as well as Communist Party
functionaries who had supported Ukraines distinctiveness.

At the same time, Stalin ordered the collectivization of agriculture. The majority of
Ukrainians, who were small-scale or subsistence farmers, resisted. The state
confiscated the property of the independent farmers and forced them to work on
government collective farms. The more prosperous farmers (owning a few head of
livestock, for example) and those who resisted collectivization were branded kulaks (rich
peasants) and declared enemies of the state who deserved to be eliminated as a class.
Thousands were thrown out of their homes and deported.

In 1932, the Communist Party set impossibly high quotas for the amount of grain
Ukrainian villages were required to contribute to the Soviet state. When the villages
were not able to meet the quotas, authorities intensified the requisition campaign,
confiscating even the seed set aside for planting and levying fines in meat and potatoes
for failure to fulfill the quotas. Special teams were sent to search homes and even
seized other foodstuffs. Starving farmers attempted to leave their villages in search of
food, but Soviet authorities issued a decree forbidding Ukraines peasants from leaving
the country. As a result, many thousands of farmers who had managed to leave their
villages were apprehended and sent back, virtually a death sentence. A law was
introduced that made the theft of even a few stalks of grain an act of sabotage
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punishable by execution. In some cases, soldiers were posted in watchtowers to
prevent people from taking any of the harvest. Although informed of the dire conditions
in Ukraine, central authorities ordered local officials to extract even more from the
villages. Millions starved as the USSR sold crops from Ukraine abroad.

The USSR denied that the Holodomor had occurred. Since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the Communist Party, secret police, and government archives that have
become accessible to researchers support the conclusion that the famine was caused
by Soviet state policies and was indeed intentionally by Soviet authorities.

THIS IS THE WORKS CITED

BRUH
Facts, Holodomor Basic. "Holodomor Basic Facts." Holodomor Research and Education Consortium
| HREC. Holodoor Facts, Fall 2017. Web. 26 May 2017.

Education, Holodomor Reasearch. "Education Holodomor Research and Education Consortium."


Education Holodomor Research and Education Consortium. Holodomor Researcg, 20 May 2016.
Web. 26 May 2017

Holodomorinfo. "HolodomorInfo.com." HolodomorInfo.com. Holodomor Info, Jan.-Feb. 2011. Web.


26 May 2017.

Holodomor. "Ukrainian Famine, 1932-1933." RutgersNewark Colleges of Arts & Sciences.


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Holodomor Info, June-July 2011. Web. 26 May 2017.

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