23A020 The Holodomor by Jim Davies, 5/16/2023

I'd like to begin by saying "everyone knows" about the Holocaust, the other dreadful "Hol" of the 20th Century; but I'm no longer sure that's true. Just in case you're one of those deprived of that knowledge, the German government systematically killed about 6 million Jews and others during the period 1938 to 1945; most of them after 1941. Although largely concealed from those who had elected them, the leaders of that government did so by deliberate policy, wishing to exterminate the Jewish race. As such, it is the most horrible action of any government ever.

Yet those leaders were of the same cultural background as we are.

The count of deaths is approximate, because although those Nazis kept records carefully, when they saw WW2 was lost and evacuated the camps where the executions were done, they destroyed as many of them as possible; so a deal of research has been needed to reconstruct the numbers and names. It's also not clear how many were gassed to death immediately on arrival at the camp, and how many died later from overwork and bad nutrition; either way, it is an outrage that has scarred the history of the human race for ever. The Jewish Virtual Library has more.

But this ZGBlog is about a different "Hol", an extermination even bigger than the German one, yet very seldom taught in schools or referenced in literature and the media: the Holodomor. It was less deliberate and systematic; the Communist government under Stalin in Russia did not set out to murder between 7 and 10 million Ukrainians in the 1930s, though they must surely have known their actions (to steal their agricultural produce) would have that result. And that result was an even larger death count than Hitler achieved.

Farmers had grown the wheat and stored it in barns, but Soviet agents raided those stores and hauled it all away, for Communists openly believe that the Collective has rights that trump those of the individual producer, and in Russian cities people were starving for want of bread. Fearing urban revolutions, the government sent agents into the countryside and took what they found, leaving the producers to starve.

They did it everywhere, not just in the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic, but in Ukraine there was already a movement to resist Communist rule and separate the country from the USSR; one Stefan Bandera was its leader. He's remembered today. The tragedy now is that the Ukrainian people do not well distinguish between Communists (whose evil creed did indeed cause the Holodomor) and Russians (who carried it out under orders but who were actually suffering from Communism themselves.)

Resentment at the Communist raiders caused Ukrainans not to resist the German army when it invaded in 1942 but to welcome it as liberators, and many joined a Ukrainian brigade in the Wehrmacht. Some were assigned to guard duty in concentration or PoW camps. Bitterness toward the USSR increased.

So today's Ukrainian hostility to Russia has two roots: one is the memory of how more than 7 million peasant farmers were starved to death by Russian agents, and the other is a more general wish to be an independent country. The first is, as above, mistaken; the second is fine, except for one key factor: a wish for independence works both ways.

It's fine for Ukraine to be a separate country if that's what the population wants, but that also applies for the ethnic Russians in Crimea and the "Orange Strip." Those folk wish to be ruled not from Kiev but from Moscow (too bad they didn't think to have nobody rule them at all) and what is sauce for the Ukrainian goose is sauce also for the Orange gander.

While the underlying reason for the present war is the relentless, menacing growth of NATO, its immediate cause is the appeal by residents in the Orange Strip, tired of being shelled for seven years, for Russian help. If the UkeGov had avoided Lincoln's blunder and allowed them to secede, that immediate trigger would not have been pulled. But it didn't; like Lincoln, Zelensky really, really doesn't like losing control of land. For that government greed, scores of thousands are now dying.

The whole idea and institution of government is a blight upon humanity.