Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Stalin starved Ukraine 75 years ago

Soviet leader Josef Stalin used starvation to weaken the poor into submission. When there was resistance to collectivizing in the Ukraine area he took farmers' entire harvest so they starved. When I was reading the history of this time I was shocked to learn that soon after the Bolshevik take over the Communist leaders called for a "struggle for food." By struggle they meant to take it by force. And they did. BBC
Seventy-five years ago, Ekaterina saw seven members of her family and almost all of her neighbours starve to death, in a man-made famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine. Tree bark and roots The "Holodomor" or "famine plague" as it is known in Ukraine, was part of Joseph Stalin's programme to crush the resistance of the peasantry to the collectivisation of farming. Don't go near the priest's house either - because the neighbours there have killed and eaten their children Ekaterina Marchenko recalls a warning from her mother When in 1932 the grain harvest did not meet the Kremlin's targets, activists were sent to the villages where they confiscated not just grain and bread, but all the food they could find.

No comments: