My friend Beth has mentioned to me that she would like to hear about the Ukraine, since her husband’s family is from there originally. I do have a little stack of index cards about the Ukraine, of course I do, but it may not be enough to get me through the entire week. We’ll see.
Famine
The Ukraine was called “the bread basket” of the Soviet Union. It is a large nation with fertile soil and hospitable people. Basically, it is one large farm. The Ukrainians are very attached to the land. They have a “peasant patriotism”, their feelings for their own nation rooted in the rich soil. Ukrainians that emigrate to other areas of the world invariably become very influential and very successful. They are ambitious and resilient.
Until 1917, the Ukraine was one of the world’s tapestries of culture, religion, and language. Peoples overlapped here. Then the Bolsheviks conquered the nation. The Ukraine was one of the countries most severely damaged by Communism, the people were some of the most trapped and terrorized: mainly because the Ukraine was the most valuable commodity the Soviets had. The Ukraine fed the entire empire. There was no way on earth that the Ukraine would ever break free of the Soviet Imperium. They had no independence, no freedom of movement, no slack was ever given (like was given to some of the other more remote republics). The Ukraine was crushed like a bug under the thumb of the Imperium.
They declared independence in 1918, directly following being conquered. This was very short-lived, of course. And then the relentless crushing began.
The Great Famine was caused by the collectivization of the farms, a “program” (or a pogrom) implemented across the Soviet Union. Tens and tens of millions (this is not an exaggeration) died as a result of collectivization. And the world did nothing. Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Charles Lindbergh traveled to Russia in the middle of this great hidden famine. I have her journals from that time, and she writes in glorious positive terms about the “busy” Russians. She loved seeing everybody so “busy”, so productive. She had never been in a country which had such industry, such commitment to public works. It’s disgusting to read her journals now (at least her journals during World War II), because of 20/20 hindsight. They were willfully lied to. The happy productive Russians were trotted out for their benefit. And 200 miles away, the fields of the Ukraine were piled high with corpses.
In brief: collectivization began in 1929. Lenin was long gone. Trotsky was long gone. Stalin was now king. All of the USSR (and this is, like China, an entire country of peasants … all they did was farm, and their entire lives was their LAND) had to be moved off of their own little farms into kholkozes (collectivized farms). People were moved into barracks, there were armed guards around the peripheries, there were gates outside the collective farms with lovely slogans like: Work is Beautiful. Or whatever. Communist bulls***. The peasants resisted this move. They did not want to go. They hunkered down.
Stalin sent hundreds of thousands of people into the gulag, the massive prison camp structure he erected throughout Siberia, and none of these people were ever heard of again.
The rest of them he decided to starve out. This was a conscious decision. Public policy.
The famine began in 1930 and lasted seven years.
Moscow determined the quotas that each village had to deliver to the state. These quotas were purposefully greater than whatever the land could yield. Authorities confiscated everything that was edible. Schools were closed. Three year olds had to work in the fields, to try to squeeze the quotas out of the land. No one was allowed to leave the villages. People who tried were shot.
The main repository of Ukrainian spirit is the peasantry. The main element of Ukrainian identity is the peasantry. Stalin had to destroy that peasantry.
In 1932, a terrifying edict came down called The Law of the Blade of Grain. It’s so HEARTLESS, it just makes my blood boil. One could be shot or sent to prison for life if one stole one blade of grain.
Meanwhile, this famine is reaching massive proportions. It is a disaster. There were villages which resorted to cannibalism. There were not enough graves to contain all the dead. People lay in the streets, in the fields, in their own beds. Entire families dead from starvation in their own homes. Howling filling the streets, people crazed from hunger.
The Law of the Blade of Grain was Stalin’s final screw. Outside each village were enormous grain fields. Every single blade of grain, due to the unrealistic quotas, was “earmarked” for Moscow. Within the village, people were starving. They had to work these fields, they had to harvest this grain which could conceivably save their lives and the lives of their families, but the punishment was not just severe, it was basically the end of your life. Nobody came out of the gulag. Soldiers and secret police were posted on watchtowers around the fields, to make sure nobody stole even ONE BLADE of grain.
Desperate mothers would send their toddlers into the field, to see if they could steal a couple of blades, in the hopes that their size would keep them better-hidden than an adult. Of course, many toddlers were shot dead because of this.
I have heard estimates that 30 million people starved as a result of collectivization and the Law of the Blade of Grain. This estimate may even be low.
Today, in the Ukraine, the collectivized farms still exist, but they are now abandoned. Derelict barracks, gates swinging on the hinges, peeling murals of sickles and clasped hands … The ghost of the famine of course still exists in the Ukrainian psychology, but it also exists because of these falling-down buildings haunting the countryside.
