I spent some time in the library, and I read the collection of articles about the Holodomor, and scanned some of them(but probably still needed to know about the authors of these statements.)
here are some more interesting quotes and expressions:
…Ukraine was known for its fiery nationalism and its dominant peasant class. In such circumstances, collectivization meant crushing the peasantry, "traditional cradle of Ukrainian nationalism"..
''The Japanese consul in Odesa, who made an extensive journey throughout various regions of tke USSR in June 1932, wrote:
- "Ukrainian peasants, compared to the peasants in other republics, create a pitiful impression with their ragged clothing, emaciated bodies, and requests for alms. Even in large train stations, farmers and their wives and children stretch out their hands for alms and beg for bread.''
..."I do believe that Communist Party organs and organs sympathetic to the Communist. Party were, a large degree, controlled by agents of the Soviet Union in this period. There's a great deal of evidence to that effect. Another sort: somewhat sympathetic press organs, they seem to have been more easily manipulatable either because of those who determined editorial policy or wrote for such journals, or because the Soviets were able to influence what correspondents in Moscow could publish..
..The press dispatches going out from Moscow were subject to censorship, but the Moscow policy, naturally, was to convert the correspondents themselves to public relations people for the Soviet Union, when that was possible. A major success along this line was achieved in the case of the New York Times correspondent, Mr. Walter Duranty. Mr. A.J. Klieforth, of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, in his memorandum of June 4, 1931, reported a conversation he had, in the course of which:
"... Duranty pointed out that, in agreement with the New York Times and the Soviet authorities,' his official dispatches always reflect the official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own." (exhibit P-48, p 174)
''It is more than likely that the Soviet authorities in Ukraine and elsewhere strove to overcome a "petit bourgeois" nationalism that in the long term threatened the stability of the Soviet Union. Such a goal is easily understandable in principle. The risk of separatism did exist in the Ukraine, considering the success of the policy of "Ukrainization" in areas where national feeling was traditionally very strong. This trend probably explains the extent of Moscow's intervention, if not its methods, from 1930 onwards.''
''The city of Vinnitsa might well be called the Ukrainian Dachau. In 91 graves there lie the bodies of 9,432 victims of Soviet tyranny, shot by the NKVD in about 1937 or 1938. Among the gravestones or real cemeteries , in woods, with awful irony, under a dance floor, the bodies lay from 1937 until their discovery by the Germans in 1943. Many o f the victims had been reported by the Soviets as exiled to Siberia.''
...In 1920, 1926, and again in 1930-33, teachers, writers, artists, thinkers, political leaders were liquidated, imprisoned or deported. According to the Ukrainian Quarterly of Autumn 1948, 51,713 intellectuals were sent to Siberia in 1931 along. At least 114 major poets, writers and artists, the most prominent cultural leaders of the nation, have met the same fate. It is conservatively estimated that at least 75% of the Ukrainian intellectuals and professional men in Western Ukraine, Carpatho-Ukraine and Bukovina have been brutally exterminated by the Russians (ibid., Summer 1949)..
''Many of us have by now read the depressing stories of mass starvation that have consequently been numbed by the statistical data on the numbers of dead—all in "peacetime"—whose estimates range from four million towards of ten million. ''
The famine was certainly man-made in the sense that its immediate origin lies in human behavior - first and foremost, the grain procurements - and not, for example, in climatic conditions or in natural catastrophes, i.e.
...The disaster might be interpreted as a series of tragic coincidences, but the Petitioner, backed by many witnesses and experts, goes much further. In fact, the applicant reproaches the Soviet authorities with having in essence, orchestrated the famine to ensure the proper implementation of their policies, even at the cost of indescribable sufferings. It is the Petitioner's contention that collectivization, dekulakization and denationalization expressed in different ways the unequivocal determination of the Soviet authorities to destroy the Ukrainian nation and that - in the last resort - the famine was the final, particularly abominable, instrument of policy execution...
''Most of the accused, from whom false confessions had been extracted, were former members of the parties in power at the time of Petlura's nationalist government and were condemned to heavy prison sentences. Purges were carried out in university circles and in the Academy of Sciences and, under the pretext of an anti-Soviet conspiracy, many intellectuals ended up in prison or were forced to go into exile.''
...Like many other peoples throughout the world, Ukrainians have had their bare of tragedy and suffering, most particularly in the twentieth century..
''As the disturbances spread, the authorities called in the army to guard the stocks and the soldiers, usually Russian or at least not Ukrainians, did not hesitate to use their arms to safeguard the procurements. By virtue of the decree of August 7, 1932, on the safe guard of socialist property, provision was made for very heavy penalties, including death and the confiscation о f all possessions, against those who tried to get hold о f the grain or other food belonging to the state.''
..''I recall the great indignation with which a well-informed and renowned Ukrainian poet told me personally about mass deaths and suffering from hunger of the swollen children. He was an ardent supporter of the Soviet government, but nevertheless, in strong words he accused the Soviet clique of Stalinist leadership of having "organized the famine". He told me that in the future, the history will forgive them for many mistakes and sins against living people, perhaps it will forgive them even the anti-humanitarian methods of dekulakization, and deportations, and firing squadrons - but it will never forgive them and should not forgive them the deaths and suffering of the masses of children, tormented by famine…
...Dr. Conquest asserted "there were arrests for saying that the famine "had taken place.. '
...Collectivization" meant that a villager was no longer the owner of his own land, didn't have control of his own crops, "dekulakization" meant that a great number of villagers - between 1.6 an d 1.8 of the population - around 25 million families, deported to the Arctic…
...Scrutinizing the documentary evidence of Stalin's intentions to commit genocide against Ukrainians, Hiroaki Kuromiya recently argued that it is not possible to "conclude that Stalin intended to kill millions of people through famine. Nor did he propagate the famine-terror'. On the contrary he did it. It is likely, however, that Stalin originally intended to use the famine on a limited scale as political terror."
''Stalin used famine as a cheap alternative to deportation.''
''The Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1934 was far more brutal than the last great famine in Europe, which occurred in Finland in 1868. And the most astonishing is that such a famine resulted from deliberate human action, not from climatic hazard.''
''Tо facilitate the collectivization of peasantry in Ukraine, Stalin decided to split the Ukrainian society and eliminate its elites. In the fall of 1929 OGPU arrested 700 intellectuals accused of connections with the movement for the Liberation of Ukraine" (Spilka Vyzvolennia Ukrainy - SVU), in March-April 1930 put 45 of its fictitious members on trial for spiracy against the Soviet state. Among their crimes was setting up cells for the peasantry with the aim of separating Ukraine from tke USSR. Tke purpose of what was the first major Soviet show trial was to terrorize the Ukraiman intelligentsia, prevent them from taking up the cause of the peasants, and provide leadership on the national level. Other trials followed, first against Ukrainian nationalist elements, and by the time of the Great Famine, against disenchanted Ukrainians in party and administrative positions. At the same time, the regime deprived the villages of their natural leaders. The fall of 1929 witnessed the first phase of dekulakization, or the removal of "rich peasants" (Russian —kulaks; Ukrainian — kurkul ). Some of the confiscated kulak property went to the special cadres made up of city workers (the "25-thousanders') and rural indigents who helped with the confiscation, the rest was turned over to the collective farms. The dispossessed farmers were then driven out of their villages, exiled to Russia's northlands or resettled on poor land, in remote regions of Ukraine. A second wave of dekulakization took place a year later. In this way Ukraine lost hundreds of thousands of its best farmers, many of whom died in transit or as a result of the harsh conditions prevailing in their places of resettlement. Those who survived formed a valuable work force and their children provided new citizens for the Russian republic''
....Peasant unrest in Ukraine had national overtones. The GPU picked up fliers with such inscriptions as ''Time to rise against Moscow's yoke" and "Petlura told us the time to wake up, time to rise."
....Stalin wrote, "Ukrainian affairs have hit rock bottom. Tilings are had with regard to the Party [...] bad with the Soviets [...] bad with tke GPU." The 500,000 strong Communist Party of Ukraine was full of rotten elements, infiltrated with "conscious and unconscious Petlura adherents". Stalin cautions: "as soon as things get worse, these elements will waste no time opening front inside (and outside) the Party, against the Party. ' And he warned: 'Unless we begin to straighten out the situation we may lose Ukraine. "
Nikita Khrushchev, "was fond of saying that every Ukrainian is potentially a nationalist."
''A criminal law was adopted to force peasants to sell their reserves to the state. Those who refused to sell grain or other agriculturalal products at low prices were charged with speculation, sentenced to prison and their property was confiscated."
''In strict Marxist logic, nationality is meaningless because the proletariat on whom the construction of a perfect society rests is by definition stateless. Consequently, Lenin considered nationalism as the sign of conservative "petit bourgeois" capitalism which must be destroyed, even though it might he temporarily used to advantage to topple the regimes in power and install Bolshevik power.''
''It is more than likely that the Soviet authorities in Ukraine and elsewhere strove to overcome a "petit bourgeois" nationalism that in the long term threatened the stability of tke Soviet Union. Such a goal is easily understandable in principle. The risk of separatism did exist in the Ukraine, considering the success of the policy of "Ukrainization" in areas where national feeling was traditionally very strong.''
''Most of the accused, from whom false confessions had been extracted, were former members of the parties in power at the time of Petlura's nationalist government and were condemned to heavy prison sentences. Purges were carried out in university circles and in the Academy of Sciences and, under the pretext of an anti-Soviet conspiracy, many intellectuals ended up in prison or were forced to go into exile.''
here are some more interesting quotes and expressions:
…Ukraine was known for its fiery nationalism and its dominant peasant class. In such circumstances, collectivization meant crushing the peasantry, "traditional cradle of Ukrainian nationalism"..
''The Japanese consul in Odesa, who made an extensive journey throughout various regions of tke USSR in June 1932, wrote:
- "Ukrainian peasants, compared to the peasants in other republics, create a pitiful impression with their ragged clothing, emaciated bodies, and requests for alms. Even in large train stations, farmers and their wives and children stretch out their hands for alms and beg for bread.''
..."I do believe that Communist Party organs and organs sympathetic to the Communist. Party were, a large degree, controlled by agents of the Soviet Union in this period. There's a great deal of evidence to that effect. Another sort: somewhat sympathetic press organs, they seem to have been more easily manipulatable either because of those who determined editorial policy or wrote for such journals, or because the Soviets were able to influence what correspondents in Moscow could publish..
..The press dispatches going out from Moscow were subject to censorship, but the Moscow policy, naturally, was to convert the correspondents themselves to public relations people for the Soviet Union, when that was possible. A major success along this line was achieved in the case of the New York Times correspondent, Mr. Walter Duranty. Mr. A.J. Klieforth, of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, in his memorandum of June 4, 1931, reported a conversation he had, in the course of which:
"... Duranty pointed out that, in agreement with the New York Times and the Soviet authorities,' his official dispatches always reflect the official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own." (exhibit P-48, p 174)
''It is more than likely that the Soviet authorities in Ukraine and elsewhere strove to overcome a "petit bourgeois" nationalism that in the long term threatened the stability of the Soviet Union. Such a goal is easily understandable in principle. The risk of separatism did exist in the Ukraine, considering the success of the policy of "Ukrainization" in areas where national feeling was traditionally very strong. This trend probably explains the extent of Moscow's intervention, if not its methods, from 1930 onwards.''
''The city of Vinnitsa might well be called the Ukrainian Dachau. In 91 graves there lie the bodies of 9,432 victims of Soviet tyranny, shot by the NKVD in about 1937 or 1938. Among the gravestones or real cemeteries , in woods, with awful irony, under a dance floor, the bodies lay from 1937 until their discovery by the Germans in 1943. Many o f the victims had been reported by the Soviets as exiled to Siberia.''
...In 1920, 1926, and again in 1930-33, teachers, writers, artists, thinkers, political leaders were liquidated, imprisoned or deported. According to the Ukrainian Quarterly of Autumn 1948, 51,713 intellectuals were sent to Siberia in 1931 along. At least 114 major poets, writers and artists, the most prominent cultural leaders of the nation, have met the same fate. It is conservatively estimated that at least 75% of the Ukrainian intellectuals and professional men in Western Ukraine, Carpatho-Ukraine and Bukovina have been brutally exterminated by the Russians (ibid., Summer 1949)..
''Many of us have by now read the depressing stories of mass starvation that have consequently been numbed by the statistical data on the numbers of dead—all in "peacetime"—whose estimates range from four million towards of ten million. ''
The famine was certainly man-made in the sense that its immediate origin lies in human behavior - first and foremost, the grain procurements - and not, for example, in climatic conditions or in natural catastrophes, i.e.
...The disaster might be interpreted as a series of tragic coincidences, but the Petitioner, backed by many witnesses and experts, goes much further. In fact, the applicant reproaches the Soviet authorities with having in essence, orchestrated the famine to ensure the proper implementation of their policies, even at the cost of indescribable sufferings. It is the Petitioner's contention that collectivization, dekulakization and denationalization expressed in different ways the unequivocal determination of the Soviet authorities to destroy the Ukrainian nation and that - in the last resort - the famine was the final, particularly abominable, instrument of policy execution...
''Most of the accused, from whom false confessions had been extracted, were former members of the parties in power at the time of Petlura's nationalist government and were condemned to heavy prison sentences. Purges were carried out in university circles and in the Academy of Sciences and, under the pretext of an anti-Soviet conspiracy, many intellectuals ended up in prison or were forced to go into exile.''
...Like many other peoples throughout the world, Ukrainians have had their bare of tragedy and suffering, most particularly in the twentieth century..
''As the disturbances spread, the authorities called in the army to guard the stocks and the soldiers, usually Russian or at least not Ukrainians, did not hesitate to use their arms to safeguard the procurements. By virtue of the decree of August 7, 1932, on the safe guard of socialist property, provision was made for very heavy penalties, including death and the confiscation о f all possessions, against those who tried to get hold о f the grain or other food belonging to the state.''
..''I recall the great indignation with which a well-informed and renowned Ukrainian poet told me personally about mass deaths and suffering from hunger of the swollen children. He was an ardent supporter of the Soviet government, but nevertheless, in strong words he accused the Soviet clique of Stalinist leadership of having "organized the famine". He told me that in the future, the history will forgive them for many mistakes and sins against living people, perhaps it will forgive them even the anti-humanitarian methods of dekulakization, and deportations, and firing squadrons - but it will never forgive them and should not forgive them the deaths and suffering of the masses of children, tormented by famine…
...Dr. Conquest asserted "there were arrests for saying that the famine "had taken place.. '
...Collectivization" meant that a villager was no longer the owner of his own land, didn't have control of his own crops, "dekulakization" meant that a great number of villagers - between 1.6 an d 1.8 of the population - around 25 million families, deported to the Arctic…
...Scrutinizing the documentary evidence of Stalin's intentions to commit genocide against Ukrainians, Hiroaki Kuromiya recently argued that it is not possible to "conclude that Stalin intended to kill millions of people through famine. Nor did he propagate the famine-terror'. On the contrary he did it. It is likely, however, that Stalin originally intended to use the famine on a limited scale as political terror."
''Stalin used famine as a cheap alternative to deportation.''
''The Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1934 was far more brutal than the last great famine in Europe, which occurred in Finland in 1868. And the most astonishing is that such a famine resulted from deliberate human action, not from climatic hazard.''
''Tо facilitate the collectivization of peasantry in Ukraine, Stalin decided to split the Ukrainian society and eliminate its elites. In the fall of 1929 OGPU arrested 700 intellectuals accused of connections with the movement for the Liberation of Ukraine" (Spilka Vyzvolennia Ukrainy - SVU), in March-April 1930 put 45 of its fictitious members on trial for spiracy against the Soviet state. Among their crimes was setting up cells for the peasantry with the aim of separating Ukraine from tke USSR. Tke purpose of what was the first major Soviet show trial was to terrorize the Ukraiman intelligentsia, prevent them from taking up the cause of the peasants, and provide leadership on the national level. Other trials followed, first against Ukrainian nationalist elements, and by the time of the Great Famine, against disenchanted Ukrainians in party and administrative positions. At the same time, the regime deprived the villages of their natural leaders. The fall of 1929 witnessed the first phase of dekulakization, or the removal of "rich peasants" (Russian —kulaks; Ukrainian — kurkul ). Some of the confiscated kulak property went to the special cadres made up of city workers (the "25-thousanders') and rural indigents who helped with the confiscation, the rest was turned over to the collective farms. The dispossessed farmers were then driven out of their villages, exiled to Russia's northlands or resettled on poor land, in remote regions of Ukraine. A second wave of dekulakization took place a year later. In this way Ukraine lost hundreds of thousands of its best farmers, many of whom died in transit or as a result of the harsh conditions prevailing in their places of resettlement. Those who survived formed a valuable work force and their children provided new citizens for the Russian republic''
....Peasant unrest in Ukraine had national overtones. The GPU picked up fliers with such inscriptions as ''Time to rise against Moscow's yoke" and "Petlura told us the time to wake up, time to rise."
....Stalin wrote, "Ukrainian affairs have hit rock bottom. Tilings are had with regard to the Party [...] bad with the Soviets [...] bad with tke GPU." The 500,000 strong Communist Party of Ukraine was full of rotten elements, infiltrated with "conscious and unconscious Petlura adherents". Stalin cautions: "as soon as things get worse, these elements will waste no time opening front inside (and outside) the Party, against the Party. ' And he warned: 'Unless we begin to straighten out the situation we may lose Ukraine. "
Nikita Khrushchev, "was fond of saying that every Ukrainian is potentially a nationalist."
''A criminal law was adopted to force peasants to sell their reserves to the state. Those who refused to sell grain or other agriculturalal products at low prices were charged with speculation, sentenced to prison and their property was confiscated."
''In strict Marxist logic, nationality is meaningless because the proletariat on whom the construction of a perfect society rests is by definition stateless. Consequently, Lenin considered nationalism as the sign of conservative "petit bourgeois" capitalism which must be destroyed, even though it might he temporarily used to advantage to topple the regimes in power and install Bolshevik power.''
''It is more than likely that the Soviet authorities in Ukraine and elsewhere strove to overcome a "petit bourgeois" nationalism that in the long term threatened the stability of tke Soviet Union. Such a goal is easily understandable in principle. The risk of separatism did exist in the Ukraine, considering the success of the policy of "Ukrainization" in areas where national feeling was traditionally very strong.''
''Most of the accused, from whom false confessions had been extracted, were former members of the parties in power at the time of Petlura's nationalist government and were condemned to heavy prison sentences. Purges were carried out in university circles and in the Academy of Sciences and, under the pretext of an anti-Soviet conspiracy, many intellectuals ended up in prison or were forced to go into exile.''
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