Aftermath of a Soviet Famine

Ukraine's Pursuit of Genocide Designation Upsets Russians Who Say Others Died, Too

MOSCOW -- Relations between Russia and Ukraine, bedeviled by disputes over natural gas supplies and NATO expansion, have lately been roiled by one of the great tragedies of Soviet history: the famine of 1932-33, which left millions dead from starvation and related diseases.

Ukraine is seeking international recognition of the famine, which Ukrainians call Holodomor -- or death by hunger -- as an act of genocide.

When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin forced peasants off their homesteads and into collective farms, special military units requisitioned grain and other food before sealing off parts of the countryside. Without food and unable to escape, millions perished.

Ukraine, according to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, became "a vast death camp."

"There is now a wealth of historical material detailing the specific features of Stalin's forced collectivization and terror famine policies against Ukraine," Yushchenko wrote in the Wall Street Journal late last year. "Other parts of the Soviet Union suffered terribly as well. But in the minds of the Soviet leadership there was a dual purpose in persecuting and starving the Ukrainian peasantry. It was part of a campaign to crush Ukraine's national identity and its desire for self-determination."

There are no exact figures on how many died. Modern historians place the number between 2.5 million and 3.5 million. Yushchenko and others have said at least 10 million were killed.

But Russian politicians, historians and writers say Yushchenko and his allies are attempting to turn a Soviet crime that also killed Russians, Kazakhs and others into a uniquely Ukrainian trauma. They argue that the famine was the awful but collateral consequence of ruthless agricultural policies and the drive to industrialize, not a case of deliberate mass murder.

"There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines," the lower house of the Russian parliament said in a resolution passed this month. "Its victims were millions of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country."

Moreover, some Russians say, the push for the designation of genocide has more to do with demonizing modern-day Russia in the West than any desire for historical justice. Since Yushchenko came to power in early 2005, the two countries have repeatedly clashed over a host of issues, particularly his desire to integrate Ukraine into Western institutions and away from Russia's orbit.

The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in a front-page commentary in the newspaper Izvestia this month, wrote that the "provocative cry about 'genocide' " took shape "inside spiteful, anti-Russian, chauvinistic minds."

"Still, defamation is easy to insinuate into Westerners' minds," he wrote. "They have never understood our history: You can sell them any old fairy tale, even one as mindless as this."

That broadside came a few days after President Bush, on a visit to Ukraine, laid a wreath at a memorial to the victims of the famine. The United States and several other Western countries have recognized the famine as genocide.