Ukrainian Holodomor and the War in Ukraine

Debate between Pauline Latham and Fleur Anderson

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Latham]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because I will come on to what our Government have said in the past. It is important, because the people who were subjected to the genocide, and many of the people who were there and survived, are no longer alive, so it is incredibly difficult to go to court and prove anything from that time.

In June 2013, just after the 80th anniversary of the Holodomor, I first led a debate in this House calling for the UK Government to recognise the Holodomor as a genocide. I tried again in November 2017, but we have just marked the 90th anniversary this year and there is still no official recognition by the Government. I hope that today will prove third time lucky, and that there will be no need for a similar debate on the same subject in 10 years’ time, when it will be 100 years since the Holodomor took place.

“Holodomor” is a Ukrainian word that means “to inflict death by hunger”. However, the term now refers to the entire Stalinist campaign to eliminate the Ukrainian nation, which culminated in the forced famine of 1932 and 1933, killing millions of Ukrainians. The exact number is not known, because the Soviet Union refused to allow reporting of the famine, but it is estimated that 7 million, and maybe as many as 10 million, died in Ukraine, with many more deaths in neighbouring Soviet states. The Holodomor was a policy designed to eliminate the Ukrainian rural farmer population, who were the embodiment and spirit of Ukrainian culture and nationhood.

To understand the Holodomor, it is important to keep in mind the context of that period. In 1922, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was proclaimed, Soviet Ukraine was part of it, after being invaded by the Bolsheviks following the Russian revolution. Although Soviet Ukraine theoretically retained some domestic control, in reality all decisions were made by the Soviet leadership in Moscow. The Communist party of Ukraine’s membership was less than 20% Ukrainian, so the Bolsheviks had very little support. Initially, from 1923, the Communist party took steps to appease the local population, including encouraging the Ukrainian language and culture and encouraging Ukrainians to join the party. However, by the end of the 1920s, Stalin had taken over as party leader and imposed a new revolution from above, which included banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, arresting the clergy, and arresting, deporting and executing Ukrainian nationalists and the cultural elite. Intellectuals, writers and artists committed suicide rather than be deported to Russia.

At the same time, the Stalinist Government was embarking on rapid industrialisation, and the cost fell most heavily on the Ukrainian rural classes. Wholesale agricultural collectivisation took place from 1929. Wealthy peasants, known as kulaks, had their property taken away and faced further sanction. By the mid-1930s, 100,000 such families had been deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan. In response to resistance in 1932 and 1933, Stalin’s Government imposed impossibly high grain requisition quotas, which had to be satisfied before any grain could be kept by the local population. In 1932, not a single Ukrainian village met the quota threshold assigned to it. Anyone who kept grain destined for Russia was executed by firing squad. Special police roamed the countryside searching homes and summarily executing those who were found to have stored food. Moscow refused to provide any relief. In fact, at that exact time, Moscow was exporting more than a million tonnes of grain to the west. Callously and cruelly, Stalin shut Ukraine’s eastern border, preventing Ukrainians from fleeing to Russia.

These conditions led to the most horrific situation for the people of Ukraine. Men, women and children starved to death in their villages. This was not a famine; there was enough grain, even with a below average harvest in Ukraine, to comfortably feed the entire population. The grain was exported to Russia, and Ukrainians were prevented from escaping. Again, this was not a naturally occurring famine. This was murder by starvation.

At the height of the famine, 25,000 people died every day of starvation, including children too small to feed themselves, who were reliant on their parents. Some people tried to commit suicide to escape the horror of starving to death. Those who refused to steal or leave died of hunger. Those who tried to steal were shot. Those who tried to leave were returned to their villages to face the same impossible choice. Villages turned to cannibalism to survive. The dead were unburied and the sick untended. These are difficult details to hear, but it is crucial that we appreciate the scale of the Holodomor. There is a large Ukrainian community in Derbyshire. In my meetings with them over the last decade, they have asked me to persist with my efforts to seek recognition of the Holodomor as a genocide.

Raphael Lemkin was an academic and lawyer who coined the term genocide. Lemkin was born in Poland and studied at the University of Lviv in modern-day Ukraine. He defined genocide—a new word coined to denote an old practice. Genocide literally means the killing of a race. Lemkin was influential in the drafting of the genocide convention, an international treaty that criminalises genocide and has been unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Article II of the convention defines genocide as

“acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

That specifically includes killing members of the group and imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group. The Holodomor was a genocide.

On the last two occasions that I have brought this debate forward, the relevant Minister has informed the House that His Majesty’s Government will recognise an event as a genocide only once it has been recognised as such by a court. I am no lawyer, but I think it is very clear from the definition that I have set out and the history that I provided that Stalin did set out to destroy, in whole or in part, a national group—the Ukrainians. He did so by killing some, and imposing living conditions —starvation—intended to destroy the group. The fact that millions died from starvation due to Stalin’s policy when Ukraine was not in the grasp of a famine is indicative of that.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for calling for this debate. I visited the Holodomor memorial with other MPs last year. As the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) is outlining, the denial and downplaying of the Holodomor is very damaging, and is having real-world impacts right now in modern-day Ukraine. Twenty-three countries have decided to go ahead and declare the Holodomor a genocide. They include Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland and even the European Parliament. Does the hon. Member agree that this is an important time to stop denying this, and to declare the Holodomor a genocide?

[Mrs Latham]

Yes. I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. That is absolutely why this debate is so important—because we cannot deny the genocide any longer. It has to be recognised by this Government, because we will be—we are—an outlier.

Stalin set out to destroy the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians were not in the grasp of famine. He deported the cultural elite and suppressed Ukrainian culture, and there was the breaking of the rural communities. Stalin’s closure of the borders and refusal to send aid, despite selling millions of tonnes of grain to the west, are yet further proof. His desire to end Ukrainian identity is absolutely clear, and Soviet actions in the aftermath of the Holodomor—decimated villages were resettled with ethnically Russian communities—are conclusive.

Raphael Lemkin put the matter very clearly in a speech at the 20th commemoration of the Holodomor in New York City in 1953. He described the Holodomor as

“perhaps the classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification—the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.”

He recognised that there were no attempts at “complete annihilation”, as had taken place in the holocaust. However, his most powerful quote is as follows:

“And yet, if the Soviet program succeeds completely, if the intelligentsia, the priests and the peasants can be eliminated, Ukraine will be as dead as if every Ukrainian were killed, for it will have lost that part of it which has kept and developed its culture, its beliefs, its common ideas, which have guided it and given it a soul, which, in short, made it a nation rather than a mass of people.”

The Lemkin quote sets out very clearly why the Holodomor amounts to a genocide. It also leads me on perfectly to another reason why today’s debate is so important. Those words, delivered by him 70 years ago, resonate with us today. Ukraine is once again threatened by Russian expansionism. Thankfully, Stalin failed, and the culture, beliefs and common ideas, the very soul of Ukraine, survived. On countless occasions in the last year, we have paid tribute in this House to the spirit and soul of the Ukrainian people in their battle against Putin.

The UK Government should always recognise crimes against humanity, including genocide, wherever they happen. In my last debate on this subject, it was suggested to me that official international recognition is less important than the memory of these events in defeating genocide. I do not agree. In my experience of serving on the Select Committee on International Development, I have visited both Rwanda and Bosnia, and have seen the peace processes that followed the Rwanda genocide and the Srebrenica massacre. Those have both been recognised as genocides by the UK Government, and that matters to the people. In any case, the Holodomor is now 90 years ago. Although my local Ukrainian community is brilliant at arranging annual commemorations and campaigning on this issue, the Holodomor is now almost out of human living memory. International recognition is absolutely crucial for local communities, and it is no surprise that the Ukrainian Government have welcomed a host of countries’ recognising the Holodomor as a genocide.

Recognition matters to the other side, too. In October 2022, when Russian forces took Mariupol, they tore down the Holodomor memorial, saying that it represented disinformation at the state level. It is clearly important to both the victims and the perpetrators when such an event is formally recognised.

That brings me on to my second point about recognition. I said that the Government should always recognise genocide when it occurs, and that is true, but in this case there is an even more obvious reason to do so. Ukraine is threatened again, and its strongest allies around the world are standing up and supporting it. That is why the delegation went a couple of weeks ago to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian nation and say, “We support you.”

As the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) said, Canada, Ireland, Australia and many other countries have long recognised the Holodomor as a genocide. In May 2022, the US Congress passed a resolution recognising the Holodomor as a genocide and condemning Soviet policies that prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid and people from escaping. There are clear overtones of what is happening in current times. Germany, Romania and Moldova recognised the Holodomor as recently as November 2022, so we are fast becoming an international outlier by refusing to acknowledge the suffering of the Ukrainian people at the hands of the Soviets in the 1930s, while at the same time supporting them in their fight today.

In the war on Ukraine, as I heard during my visit, Russians have been accused of crimes against humanity. We saw evidence of that. We saw the piled-up, burned-out, shot-at cars of people who were trying to escape the Russians. Civilians were slaughtered as part of what Russia is doing to Ukraine. We must give confidence to the Ukrainian Government and the international legal order that the UK Government and Parliament will not stand for abuses of human rights and war crimes. We can do that by recognising where genocide took place. Indeed, that may be important in the future. I raised this matter with the Foreign Secretary in the House in February, and he noted that Putin has himself said

“that his intention is to eradicate the whole concept of Ukraine.”—[Official Report, 20 February 2023; Vol. 728, c. 60.]

If that is not genocide, I do not know what is.

A final reason why it is important officially to recognise the Holodomor as a genocide is because of our Ukrainian communities in the UK. Since February 2022, thanks to the generosity of the British people, those communities have increased exponentially in size. I know from my experience in Derbyshire that it would mean a huge amount to Ukrainians in the UK if we were able to recognise the Holodomor as a genocide. I met a family on Friday who said, “Please, get the Government to recognise it. It would mean so much to the people of Ukraine.”

I therefore have two asks of the Minister. First and most importantly, will he please reconsider the official Government position that a genocide will be recognised only after a court has adjudicated on it, given the evidence that I set out, and the unique circumstances? In the light of the war in Ukraine, we need to show our support for our allies; we need to show Putin that attempts to eradicate the Ukrainian people will not be tolerated. If the US, Germany, Canada, Australia and Ukraine can recognise the genocide, we can and should, too, particularly if it can have an impact on the war.

Secondly, if His Majesty’s Government are unable to break their policy and recognise the Holodomor—I hope I am wrong about that—would the Minister be willing to arrange a debate on the issue, and a meaningful vote on it on the Floor of the House, so that the UK Parliament can at least can show its support for Ukraine, and designate the Holodomor a genocide?