EU DENOUNCES 1930S UKRAINIAN FAMINE AS CRIME

Associated Press

Oct.24, 2008, published by the Kyiv Post

The European Parliament on Thursday denounced the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s as an appalling crime against humanity instigated by the regime of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

The EU assembly voted by a large majority to condemn the famine and demanded that former Soviet nations open up their archives so that the causes can be fully investigated.

However, the resolution avoided directly referring to the famine as a genocide, an issue which has divided Ukraine and Russia.

Russia contests Ukrainian assertions that the famine was a genocide, because other ethnic groups, such as Russians and Kazakhs, also suffered. As the Soviet Union's legal successor, Russia is also concerned about the possibility of legal action or having to pay reparations.

The death toll in the 1932-33 famine is contested. Some historians believe 3.5 million perished in what is known in Ukraine as "Holodomor," or "death by hunger," while the country's leaders say up to 10 million died.

In their resolution, the EU lawmakers called the famine, "an appalling crime against the Ukrainian people, and against humanity" that was "cynically and cruelly planned by Stalin's regime in order to force through the Soviet Union's policy of collectivization of agriculture."

The text makes reference to the U.N. convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide, but some conservative lawmakers complained that a more explicit reference to the famine as genocide was not included to ensure left-leading members voted in favor.

"Other political groups don't think the strict definition of that term should be applied to the Holodomor perhaps because of a fear of offending modern-day Russia," said British Conservative Charles Tannock. "But none of us wisр to belittle the unimaginable suffering inflicted upon Ukraine."

Soviet authorities masterminded the famine to force peasants across the Soviet Union to give up their private plots and join collective farms. The measure was particularly calamitous in Ukraine, the breadbasket of the Soviet state.

Historians in Ukraine and the West are divided on whether the famine was an act of genocide. Some say Ukrainians were targeted as an ethnic group. Others argue Soviet authorities set out to eradicate private landowners as a social class.

Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are gathering evidence for a court case in Ukraine to try to prove the famine was genocide.