We Remember. We Unite. We Will Win!

We remember the crime of Stalin's genocide and its victims.
We unite, because unity is the key to our victory. Disunity and misunderstanding caused Ukrainians to lose their own state in the 1920s, led to its occupation by the Bolsheviks and to the crime of genocide.
But today Ukraine and the world are different. We have our own state and Armed Forces, the support of the world, and military, financial and diplomatic assistance. And, most importantly, the unity of the people. That is why we will stand firm and we will win.

Historical background
In 1933 Ukraine suffered a national catastrophe that brought the nation to the brink of extinction. This famine was not the result of a natural disaster, drought or crop failure, but of the deliberate policy of the communist totalitarian regime. By forcibly seizing food, blockading villages and entire districts, banning departure from Ukraine, shutting down rural trade and carrying out repressions, the communists created conditions for Ukrainians that were incompatible with life, and thereby committed mass murder by starvation.
Causes of the Holodomor
As a result of the occupation of the Ukrainian People's Republic by the communist regime, a large part of Ukraine became part of the USSR in the early 1920s. To retain power, the communist regime was forced to agree to the creation of a quasi-state entity, the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. In the 1920s, to strengthen its position in the national regions, and in Ukraine in particular, the communist regime launched a policy of “korenizatsiia” (indigenisation), that is, “rooting” the party in these regions, which also involved encouraging the development of local cultures. In Ukraine, however, the policy of indigenisation immediately went beyond the party's framework. Ukraine in the 1920s experienced a European-style cultural renaissance; cultural traditions distinct from Russian ones were taking shape, oriented towards Europe under the slogan “Away from Moscow!” (the writer Mykola Khvylovyi); a national education system was being created; and the economic concept of Ukraine as an autonomous economic organism was being substantiated (the economist Mykhailo Volobuiev).
At the end of the 1920s, Joseph Stalin seized full power in the USSR and began to establish totalitarian control over society. This led to growing anti-government sentiment and open protests in various regions and republics of the USSR. In Ukraine, which had historical experience of its own statehood, this resistance was the most active.
In 1930 a large-scale wave of mass protests and armed uprisings against the forced collectivisation of peasant farms swept across Ukraine. That year more than 4,000 mass protests involving up to 1.2 million peasants were recorded in the Ukrainian SSR.
This resistance and the public mood gave rise among the communist leadership to fears about the fragility of their position in Ukraine and the threat of a national uprising. The communist authorities therefore regarded Ukrainian intellectuals and the economically independent and nationally conscious peasantry as a real threat to the existence of the USSR.
A new wave of mass protests began to rise in Ukraine in 1932. These protests were caused by the famine that engulfed the Ukrainian SSR in the spring of that year as a result of the excessive seizure of grain from peasant farms. To meet the grain procurement quotas of 1931, almost the entire harvest had been taken from the peasants.
In the critical situation in Ukraine in the spring of 1932, the civilised way out of the crisis would have been a radical revision of the excessive grain procurement plans, declaring the famine-stricken districts humanitarian disaster zones and providing them with urgent large-scale assistance. Instead, the totalitarian regime not only refused to abandon the excessive grain procurement plans but also subjected Ukrainians to unprecedented repressions aimed at depriving them of food.
The main cause of the critical situation in Ukraine at that time was the inefficient collective farm system. Peasants who worked for nominal workday units had no interest in doing their work well. The collective farm management, recruited mainly from party activists, often proved incompetent and ineffective. Yet the communist leadership saw all this as malicious intent and sabotage by Ukrainians, and so it was decided to punish and “re-educate” them.

Concealing the truth about the Holodomor
The communist authorities criminally concealed the fact of the famine. There was no official mention of this terrible tragedy. Even in their own official correspondence, state and party functionaries describing the swelling of tens and hundreds of thousands of families did not mention famine, only “food difficulties”. New terms, such as “protein-deficiency oedema”, appeared in death registers to denote death from starvation.
The leadership of the USSR deliberately misled the international community. Stalin's totalitarian regime denied the famine in Ukraine and refused the assistance offered by numerous non-governmental organisations and Ukrainian communities abroad. Accepting it would, if not have prevented the tragedy, at least have significantly reduced its scale.
Moreover, large stocks of grain and other food had been accumulated in the state reserves of the Inviolable and Mobilisation Funds, but they were not used to help starving Ukraine; instead they were shipped to other regions of the USSR and abroad. In 1932 the Soviet Union exported 1.6 million tonnes of grain, and in 1933, 1.8 million.
The communist authorities thus had ample opportunity to prevent famine in Ukraine but did not use it. Instead, they implemented a well-thought-out system of repressive measures to deprive the peasants of food and cut off their access to it.
The Holodomor was concealed not only from the outside world but also from the descendants of its victims. In 1933 village councils were ordered not to state the cause of death when registering deaths. The following year a new instruction was issued: the civil registry (RATsS)5 death registers for 1932–1933 were to be sent to special departments (where most of them were destroyed). In the Soviet Union the ban on information about the famine remained in force until 1987.
The anti-Ukrainian nature of the Holodomor
The selectively anti-Ukrainian nature of the Holodomor is confirmed by the brutal repressive measures that led to the artificial famine, applied by the regime in Ukraine and in the Kuban, which was part of the RSFSR but was Ukrainian in language, traditions and culture.
Stalin's totalitarian regime linked grain procurement in Ukraine and the North Caucasus directly to the issue of Ukrainisation, as evidenced by the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of 14 December 1932 “On Grain Procurement in Ukraine, the North Caucasus and the Western Region”. Despite its title, this document pays considerable attention to the “correct implementation of Ukrainisation”. In particular, this meant the liquidation of Ukrainian schools in the Kuban and the mass persecution of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. The resolution confirms that the artificially organised famine in Ukraine and the North Caucasus was used not only as a means of exterminating peasants but also as an instrument for destroying Ukrainian national identity and eliminating the bearers of that identity because they belonged to the Ukrainian national group.
The campaign launched in 1933 to “purge” “Petliurists” and “Ukrainian nationalists” also confirmed the anti-Ukrainian nature of the communist regime's policy. The scale of repression in Ukraine at that time is comparable to the Great Terror of 1937–1938.6 In January 1934 Pavlo Postyshev, the de facto head of the Ukrainian SSR, reported that “the past year in Ukraine was the year of the defeat of the nationalist counter-revolution”.
Opponents of recognising the Holodomor as genocide sometimes argue that it did not have an exclusively Ukrainian national dimension, since not only Ukrainians but also members of national minorities living in Ukraine died of starvation. However, this argument is no reason to deny the anti-Ukrainian nature of the Holodomor. Members of Ukraine's national minorities became involuntary victims of the Ukrainian famine not because they were Poles, Jews, Germans or Bulgarians, but because they lived among the Ukrainian nation against which the crime was directed.
Demographic losses
The victims of the Holodomor number in the millions. The terrible circumstances of the crime make it impossible to establish either the exact number of innocent people who died of starvation or a complete list of their names.
The problem of counting the victims of the Holodomor has a long history and is caused by the insufficient data on which such calculations have been and are being made (owing to the general weakness of statistical work in the USSR, under-registration and numerous manipulations of statistical data at that time). Because they applied different methodologies and took different factors and data into account, the researchers who carried out such calculations reached different conclusions. Estimates of the losses range from 3 to 7 million victims. Even higher figures are cited.
In the second half of the 2000s, the Ptukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, together with universities in the USA, set up a special group of scholars to calculate the demographic losses from the Holodomor (O. Hladun, N. Levchuk, O. Rudnytskyi, O. Volovyna and others). The group concluded that excess mortality caused by the Holodomor in Ukraine amounted to more than 3.9 million people. Losses of the unborn are estimated at 0.6 million. Specialists therefore estimate the total demographic losses resulting from the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine at 4.5 million human lives.
However, despite the differing estimates of scholars, one thing remains indisputable: the Holodomor destroyed millions of human lives. The fates of millions were crippled. The horrors endured left a deep trauma in several generations of Ukrainians. Active, let alone mass, resistance to the regime was suppressed in most of Ukraine.
But the system did not achieve its main goal: it did not break Ukraine. Among the millions of ruined lives there were millions of those who did not lose their human dignity and faith. Thanks to the indomitability of the Ukrainian people, Ukraine restored its independence in 1991. And today's nationwide resistance to Russian aggression shows that Ukrainians have finally rid themselves of the fears instilled by the totalitarian regime in the Kremlin for decades.
Restoring the memory of the Holodomor. Since gaining independence, Ukraine has come a long way in restoring the national memory of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. In September 1993, on the 60th anniversary of the tragedy, the victims of the Holodomors were commemorated at state level in Ukraine for the first time.
In 1998 the President established by decree the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomors. In 2003 the Verkhovna Rada, in its Resolution and Address to the Ukrainian people, recognised the Holodomor as an act of genocide. On 28 November 2006 Parliament adopted the Law “On the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine”, which recognised the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
In 2008 the National Book of Memory of the Victims of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine, totalling more than 22,000 pages, was published, and the Holodomor Victims Memorial was built.
In 2010 the Kyiv Court of Appeal considered a criminal case opened by the Security Service of Ukraine, recognised the Holodomor of 1932–1933 as an act of genocide, and found Joseph Stalin, Viacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Pavlo Postyshev, Stanislav Kosior, Vlas Chubar and Mendel Khataievych guilty of organising the crime.
The assessment of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine as genocide is based on a large body of scholarly research and international legal documents, and on hundreds of thousands of archival documents and survivors' testimonies. The bibliography on the killing by starvation in Ukraine in 1932–1933 includes more than 15,000 items. More than 200,000 eyewitness accounts have been recorded. More than 7,000 monuments and memorials honouring the victims of the genocide have been erected in the cities and villages of Ukraine.
Every year, on the fourth Saturday of November, Ukraine commemorates those who perished in the Holodomor. Ukrainians light candles at memorials and in their homes. These lights symbolise grief and the memory of the millions of Ukrainian lives lost, as well as the belief that nothing like this must ever happen again anywhere.
To date, the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine has been recognised as an act of genocide by the parliaments of 17 UN member states, namely Estonia, Australia, Canada, Hungary, Lithuania, Georgia, Poland, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Latvia, Portugal, the USA, Czechia and Brazil.