Holodomor: the Ukrainian Genocide

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. Excluding Crimea, Ukraine has a population estimated around 42.5 million. The capital of Ukraine is kiev, which is also its largest city. The official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian. Ukraine is also the largest country entirely in Europe. The dominant religions in Ukraine are Eastern Orthodoxy and Greek Catholicism. Ukraine has very fertile soil with extensive farmlands. But the country suffers from high poverty rates and severe corruption. In the following essay will be about the Holodomor genocide the problems leading up to it, how the survivors of the genocide lived through the situation and were able to live and finally it will be about how Ukraine is present day and how the genocide affected the country.

Ukraine has very fertile lands which made it one of the highest grain producers of Europe. Ukraines population consisted of mostly farmers which were 80% of the population. These factors are what drove Joseph Stalin who was ruler of the Soviet Union who planned to starve the Ukrainians to death. Another reason why he did this was to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement. Stalin rejected outside aid, and confiscated household food items. This genocide is similar to the Holocaust because of their very high death tolls with Ukraine having a estimate of over twelve million deaths and the Holocaust with six million deaths. Stalin forced farmers to make grain or they would be killed. Stalin did this so he could be able to feed his population. Peasants were forced to transfer land and livestock to state-owned farmers and that is where they worked as day-labourers for payment.

One survivor of this tragic event was Pavlo Rozhko. He is ninety-seven now, but when the famine occurred he was eleven. Rozhko said that people were scared and wound hide from each other. Rozhko also said those who were standing on their feet lived on whatever they can find a bring home. To survive they would eat leaves, tree bark, nettles or whatever nature provided them because the soviets took their lands and any piece of food they had. This is similar to the Holocaust in way that they had to do anything to survive and get food. The genocide affected Rozhko in a very negative way. Rozhko lost his parents, family members, friends and many more to starvation. Maria Vivcharyk, another survivor of the genocide was 8 years old at the time. People would come to Maria’s in western Ukraine and they would save them. A man or woman would come into their house dripping wet and they would change their clothes and wash them. They did not give them food immediately, only tea and dried bread because they could die if they ate too much, they were so starved.   

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