DISINFO: Holodomor famine was largely caused by the West
DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS
  • Outlet: RIA (archived)*
  • Date of publication: December 11, 2022
  • Article language(s): Russian
  • Reported in: Issue 321
  • Countries / regions discussed: Ukraine, Russia, USSR
Tags:
Holodomor Historical revisionism USSR

DISINFO: Holodomor famine was largely caused by the West

SUMMARY

The main cause of the Holodomor was large-scale crop failure. To a large extent, the famine was also promoted by Western countries, which demanded that the USSR pay with grain in foreign trade operations with them.

RESPONSE

This is an example of gross historical revisionism and a recurring pro Kremlin disinformation narrative about Holodomor, claiming that there was no deliberately caused famine in Ukraine.

The Holodomor was an man-made famine deliberately caused by Stalin with the aim of remove a perceived Ukrainian threat to the Soviet regime. The Soviet state took away livestock, crops and seeds from the peasants under the guise that they "plundered" state property. The Soviet law on the seizure of food from peasants was adopted in 1932 and is known as the "Five Spikelet Law". Anyone who gathered several ears of wheat on the collective farm field was a culprit of "theft of state property". The punishment for theft of kolkhoz or cooperative property was the death sentence. This law was personally attributed to Joseph Stalin. The famine of 1932-1933 claimed the lives of 7 to 10 million citizens of the Soviet Union; the disaster affected in large parts but not only Ukraine but also parts of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Russia.

The Holodomor is well documented and confirmed by a huge array of declassified documents, including official documents of the Soviet authorities and the Communist Party. In 2006, the Verkhovna Rada officially recognised the Holodomor of 1932-33 as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. According to the latest data, 15 UN member states and the Vatican state recognise the Holodomor as an act of genocide in Ukraine. The European Parliament and PACE have recognised the Holodomor as a crime of the Soviet regime against their own people and a crime against humanity.

See similar cases including Russophobic historical concepts, including so-called Holodomor-genocide, have brought Ukraine to a civil war , Holodomor is a myth invented of American propaganda , Holodomor-Genocide invented by Ukraine , Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 was not a genocide of the population.

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Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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