Holodomor denials spew from internet

Evidence is clear that millions in Ukraine were starved, Jars Balan says.

A sessional lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, Dougal Macdonald, recently posted on his personal Facebook page a diatribe dismissing the genocidal Ukrainian famine, or Holodomor, as a myth concocted by the Nazis. Macdonald produces an online bulletin of the Marxist-leninist Party of Canada and ran as the party’s candidate in Edmonton-strathcona riding in the last federal election, garnering 77 votes.

His denial of the Stalinist-created famine immediately brought to mind the late James Keegstra’s denial of the Holocaust, which resulted in his dismissal as a teacher — something many in the Ukrainian community believe should happen with Mr. Macdonald.

I would like to set the record straight about some facts about the Holodomor.

After decades of dismissal, denial and obfuscation of the famine by Soviet propagandists and enablers in the West, there is now a massive body of evidence that millions of Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death in 1932-33 as a result of Soviet policy.

Numerous books, scholarly articles, and academic conferences devoted to the subject document that the Kremlin implemented measures immediately before, during, and after the famine designed to break the widespread Ukrainian resistance to the brutal forced collectivization of agriculture while dealing a crippling blow to Ukrainian aspirations for greater autonomy or independence.

The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the U of A has for seven years been operating a unit devoted specifically to researching the Holodomor, which has produced a flood of information about the artificial famine based on newly accessible secret police files in Ukraine and diverse but often overlooked holdings in the West.

Historical research on the Holodomor continues to deepen our knowledge of the causes and consequences of this horrific famine. It was this sort of serious scholarship that, in 2008, inspired the Canadian government to recognize the Holodomor as a deliberate act of genocide.

It was not the Nazis who uncovered and promoted awareness of the Holodomor, but reputable reporters like the Welshman, Gareth Jones, the Englishman, Malcolm Muggeridge, and the Canadian, Rhea Clyman, who first alerted the world about the terrible crime against humanity that was taking place in Soviet Ukraine.

All of them saw with their own eyes what was happening and were so appalled by the behaviour of the Bolshevik regime that they felt compelled to speak out. They were subsequently joined by a growing chorus of other Western journalists and intellectuals, all of whom had left-wing views and initially believed in the Soviet “experiment.”

In this era of fake news and alternative facts, we must avoid misinformation drawn from the propagandistic backwaters of the internet. Those interested in learning more about the Holodomor should consider well-researched and scholarly sources. An easily accessible source is the website of the Holodomor Research and Educational Consortium, holodomor.ca