The Art of Tetman Callis

“Was the Great Ukrainian Famine (in Ukrainian, the Holodomor) a premeditated act of genocide against Ukraine and its people? In November 2006, the Ukrainian parliament defined it as such. A number of parliaments and governments around the world passed similar resolutions, while the Russian government launched an international campaign to undermine the Ukrainian claim. Political controversy and scholarly debate on the nature of the Ukrainian famine continue to this day, turning largely on the definition of the term ‘genocide.’ But a broad consensus is also emerging on some of the crucial facts and interpretations of the 1932-1933 famine. Most scholars agree that it was indeed a man-made phenomenon caused by official policy; while it also afflicted the North Caucasus, the lower Volga region, and Kazakhstan, only in Ukraine did it result from policies with clear ethnonational coloration: it came in the wake of Stalin’s decision to terminate the Ukrainization policy and in conjunction with an attack on the Ukrainian party cadres. The famine left Ukrainian society severely traumatized, crushing its capacity for open resistance to the regime for generations to come.” – Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe