holodomor ukraine

Such a goal would have been unachievable even if the communists had not already ruined the nation’s productivity by eliminating the best farmers and forcing others onto the feeble collectives. The word Holodomor literally translated from Ukrainian means "death by hunger", "killing by hunger, killing by starvation",[24] or sometimes "murder by hunger or starvation". Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on 17 May 2010 near Memorial to the Holodomor Victims in Kyiv. This source further states "Depending upon the estimations made concerning unregistered mortality and natality, these figures could be increased to a level of 2.8 million to a maximum of 4.8 million excess deaths and to 3.7 million to a maximum of 6.7 million population losses (including birth losses)". There were bones, pig-weed, skin, and what looked like a boot top in this pot. Gathering numerous refugees at railway stations, on trains and elsewhere facilitates the spread. "They just sat," writes Dolot of his fellow villagers, "or lay down silently, too feeble even to talk. ", But perhaps the most intense thrust was against the church, for it represented not only a form of Ukrainian solidarity, but the Gospel whose principles inherently oppose those of Marxism. sent [Pavel] Postyshev, a sadistically cruel Russian chauvinist, as its viceroy to Ukraine. In principle, of course, there is nothing wrong with farmers pooling their resources and efforts in a cooperative venture. Duranty enjoyed personal access to Stalin, called him "the greatest living statesman," and even praised the dictator’s notorious show trials. Church icons were smashed; books and archives were burned; church bells were even sold as scrap. Occurring between the Russian Revolution and the Second World War, the Holodomor was denied by the Soviet Government until only a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Photo: Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. Now, memorials stand all over the world that honor the victims and officially acknowledge the Holodomor. But emigration was strictly forbidden. As part of the three-day event, from 23 to 25 November, video testimonies of the communist regime's crimes in Ukraine, and documentaries by famous domestic and foreign film directors were shown. Although some Western observers did report the magnitude of the Ukrainians’ plight, such comments were extremely rare. Also literally known as "Extermination by hunger" or "Hunger-extermination". "[48]:225 More than 2,500 people were convicted of cannibalism during the Holodomor. The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and non-communist Ukrainian Academy of Sciences were allowed to operate independently. In addition, the decree directed that entertainment events are to be restricted and television and radio programming adjusted accordingly. [50][25][51] There are also those who blame a systematic set of policies perpetrated by the Soviet government under Stalin designed to exterminate the Ukrainians. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Yes! Finally, on the eve of World War II, both the terror and the turmoil in the party began to subside. [72] Historian David R. Marple in this vein gives a figure of 7.5[18] million. Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko directed, in Decree No. Then-Mayor Sheila Dixon presided over the ceremony and declared 29 May to be "Ukrainian Genocide Remembrance Day in Baltimore". Since 2006, Ukraine has officially observed a Holodomor Memorial Day on the fourth Saturday of November. This atrocity was known to the Roosevelt administration, but not to the American people at large, thanks to suppression of the story by the Western press — as we shall show. [citation needed], By mid-April 1933, Kharkiv Oblast reached the top of the most affected list, while Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa, Vinnytsia, and Donetsk oblasts, and Moldavian SSR were next on the list. [80] The number of recorded excess deaths extracted from the birth/death statistics from Soviet archives is contradictory. To force the villagers into collectives, the communists threatened them with being declared enemies of the state, to be dealt with by the GPU. The brigade went from house to house. [44] The Ukrainian Weekly, which was tracking the situation in 1933, reported the difficulties in communications and the appalling situation in Ukraine. ", Stalin accomplished genocide against Ukraine by two means. A United Nations joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished. [27][28][29] However, in the Soviet Union—of which Ukraine was a constituent republic—references to the famine were controlled, even after de-Stalinization in 1956. "Les Famines Soviétiques de 1931–1933 et le Holodomor Ukrainien. James Perloff is the author of The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline and Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism. [137], For the simultaneous famine across the USSR, or the Kazakh SSR, see, 1932–33 engineered famine in Soviet Ukraine. ", "The Turn Away from Economic Explanations for Soviet Famines", Findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine, Joint Statement on the Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine (Holodomor), Address of the Verkhovna Rada to the Ukrainian nation on commemorating the victims of Holodomor 1932–1933 (in Ukrainian), "The Institute of National Remembrance | Holodomor. Barkan, Elazar; Cole, Elizabeth A.; Struve Kai (2007). "Dekulakization" slaughtered millions. On the kolkhozes, livestock, poorly cared for, easily died, and equipment fell into disrepair. Sometimes they completely tore down suspicious walls…. [43], The first reports of mass malnutrition and deaths from starvation emerged from two urban areas of the city of Uman, reported in January 1933 by Vinnytsia and Kyiv oblasts. Those accused of being kulaks were either shot, deported to remote slave labor camps in Russia, or put in local labor details. Many Belarusians, Volga Germans and other nationalities became victims as well. This was the first piece of legislation in the Province's history to be introduced with Tri-Partisan sponsorship: the joint initiators of the bill were Dave Levac, MPP for Brant (Liberal Party); Cheri DiNovo, MPP for Parkdale–High Park (NDP); and Frank Klees, MPP for Newmarket–Aurora (PC). [104], The Ukrainian parliament first recognized the Holodomor as a genocide in 2003, and criminalized both Holodomor denial and Holocaust denial in 2006. Of this number, 1.057 million is attributed to the birth deficit, 930,000 to forced out-migration, and 2.582 million to the combination of excess mortality and voluntary out-migration. Passing it in a train, an American correspondent saw "huge pyramids of grain, piled high, and smoking from internal combustion." It was announced that the failure of collectivization was due to sabotage by "kulaks." In fact, the Soviet Union exported more than a million tons of grain to the West during this period. They had gone over the country like a swarm of locusts and taken away everything edible; they had shot or exiled thousands of peasants, sometimes whole villages; they had reduced some of the most fertile land in the world to a melancholy desert. Jails — unfamiliar to Ukrainian peasants — began appearing in every village. In addition, the situation was exacerbated by poor administration of the plan and the lack of relevant general management. [31] An early public usage in the Soviet Union was in a February 1988 speech by Oleksiy Musiyenko, Deputy Secretary for ideological matters of the party organisation of the Kyiv branch of the Union of Soviet Writers in Ukraine. The General Committee decided this afternoon not to recommend the inclusion of an item on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–1933 in Ukraine. This was frightening. Luciuk, Lubomyr (and L Grekul), Holodomor: Reflections on the Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Soviet Ukraine (Kashtan Press, Kingston, 2008. [58] As a child, Mikhail Gorbachev, born into a mixed Russian-Ukrainian family, experienced the famine in Stavropol, Russia. They measured the oven and calculated if it was large enough to hold hidden grain behind the brickwork. According to this study the life expectancy for those born in 1933 sharply fell to 10.8 years for females and to 7.3 years for males and remained abnormally low for 1934 but, as commonly expected for the post-crisis peaked in 1935–36. [131], On 7 November 2015, the Holodomor Genocide Memorial was opened in Washington D.C.[132][133], In the 115th Congress, both the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives adopted resolutions commemorating the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor, "the Soviet Union's manmade famine that it committed against the people of Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. [60] Those who were left behind and attempted to escape the zones of famine were ordered shot. In Robert Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow, we read the following account of the party officials’ dining hall at Pohrebyshcha: Day and night it was guarded by militia keeping the starving peasants away from the restaurant…. [49], The reasons for the famine are a subject of scholarly and political debate. [75][77][78] Soviet archives show that excess deaths in Ukraine in 1932–1933 numbered a minimum of 1.8 million (2.7 including birth losses). [75], According to the correction for officially non-accounted child mortality in 1933[81] by 150,000 calculated by Sergei Maksudov, the number of births for 1933 should be increased from 471,000 to 621,000 (down from 1,184,000 in 1927). Do not consider this figure to be exaggerated: I’m sure it could even have been reached and exceeded by now. [36], The famine affected the Ukrainian SSR as well as the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (a part of the Ukrainian SSR at the time) in spring 1932[37] and from February to July 1933,[38] with the most victims recorded in spring 1933. On 10 November 2003 at the United Nations, 25 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, and United States signed a joint statement on the seventieth anniversary of the Holodomor with the following preamble: In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women and children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime. By the end of 1930, 80 percent of all Ukraine’s village churches had been shut down. The good people died first. Of the estimated five million people who died in the Soviet Union, almost four million were Ukrainians. Eyewitness Yefrosyniya Poplavets recalls: "To save our embroidered shirts we put them on under our old ragged jackets. [82], A 2002 study by Vallin et al. This campaign extended beyond kulaks to broadly attacking all vestiges of Ukrainian nationalism. Snyder states that demographic calculations carried out by the Ukrainian government provide a figure of 3.89 million dead, and opined that the actual figure is likely between these two figures, approximately 3.3 million deaths to starvation and disease related to the starvation in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933. "[58][59] Under the collectivism policy, for example, farmers were not only deprived of their properties but a large swath of these were also exiled in Siberia with no means of survival. [128][129] NSC Spokesman Mike Hammer released a similar statement on 20 November 2010. One reason for this unfamiliarity is that Ukraine has rarely known political independence; it was under Russia’s heel throughout much of its existence — under Soviet domination prior to 1991, and under Czarist Russia before that. The statement released by the White House Press Secretary reflects on the significance of this date, stating that "in the wake of this brutal and deliberate attempt to break the will of the people of Ukraine, Ukrainians showed great courage and resilience. Of course, to avoid starvation, nearly every family did attempt to conceal food. [16] Research has since narrowed the estimates to between 3.3[17] and 7.5[18] million. [83], According to historian Snyder, the recorded figure of excess deaths was 2.4 million. Straight-line extrapolation of population (continuation of the previous net change) between census takings in 1927 and 1936 would have been +4.043 million, which compares to a recorded -538,000 change. The Ukrainian verb moryty (морити) means "to poison, to drive to exhaustion, or to torment". Scholarly positions are diverse. National Bank of Ukraine. [123], A monument to the Holodomor has been erected on Calgary's Memorial Drive, itself originally designated to honour Canadian servicemen of the First World War. British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who secretly investigated Ukraine without Soviet permission, was able to escape communist censorship by sending details home to the Manchester Guardian in a diplomatic bag. At the same time, workers were shown agitprop movies depicting peasants as counterrevolutionaries who hid grain and potatoes at a time when workers, who were constructing the "bright future" of socialism, were starving. When Ukraine resisted Soviet attempts at collectivization in the 1920s and '30s, the Soviet Union under Stalin used labor camps, executions, and starvation (Holodomor) to kill millions of Ukrainians. About half of these deaths represent the liquidation of the kulaks, via execution and slow death in gulags, while the famine itself claimed the lives of approximately seven million, including three million children. Stalin announced that the solution to better grain production was to "struggle against the capitalist elements of the peasantry, against the kulaks," and he proclaimed the goal of "liquidation of the kulaks as a class." Case Study: The Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932–1933, Holodomor – Famine in Soviet Ukraine 1932–1933, Holodomor: The Secret Holocaust in Ukraine, "Ukrainian Americans Commemorate Famine in Homeland 50 Years Ago", People's war 1917–1932 by Kyiv city organization "Memorial", Oksana Kis, Defying Death Women's Experience of the Holodomor, 1932–1933, Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, Polish–Soviet War, 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance, 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Aggravation of class struggle under socialism, National delimitation in the Soviet Union, Demolition of Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization, 1906 Bolshevik raid on the Tsarevich Giorgi, Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holodomor&oldid=986598029, Crimes of the Communist regime in Ukraine against Ukrainians, Articles with Ukrainian-language sources (uk), Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Ukrainian-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2018, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2015, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2020, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2020, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2012, Articles with Russian-language sources (ru), Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. By late 1933 Ukrainization had come to a halt, and a policy of Russification commenced. Some historians question the accuracy of Soviet censuses, as they may reflect Soviet propaganda. They further note that the term Holodomor was "introduced and popularized by the Ukrainian diaspora in North America before Ukraine became independent" and that "the term 'Holocaust' is not explained at all". Despite a communist push for collectivization, Ukraine’s farms had mostly remained private — the foundation of their success. Most peasants fiercely resisted. Of the estimated five million people who died in the Soviet Union, almost four million were Ukrainians. [63] The Soviet Union long denied that the famine had taken place. [25] It is a compound of the Ukrainian words holod, 'hunger'; and mor, 'plague'. In 1933, the number of recorded cases was 20 times the 1929 level. Arrests, followed by imprisonment, exile, or execution, decimated the ranks of intellectuals, writers, and artists; some, like Khvylovy, committed suicide in protest. In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Ukraine became part of a bloody battlefield of fighting between the Bolsheviks (the group that eventually became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Czarist Whites, and Ukrainian nationalists. Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney attended a vigil in Kyiv. The definite aim of this crime is to liquidate the Ukrainian problem over a few months, sacrificing from 10 to 15 million people. Ultimately, of course, the Bolsheviks prevailed, but Lenin shrewdly recognized that concessions would be necessary to gain Ukraine’s cooperation as a member of the unstable young USSR. Here in the United States, Ukrainian-American organizations such as the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), Ukrainian Genocide Famine Foundation, and others work diligently to maintain awareness of the Holodomor. The GPU managed parallel reporting and food assistance in the Ukrainian SSR. In November 1932, he brazenly told his New York Times readers, "There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be." [92][94][95][96][97] In the Soviet Union, authorities all but banned discussion of the famine, and Ukrainian historian Stanislav Kulchytsky stated the Soviet government ordered him to falsify his findings and depict the famine as an unavoidable natural disaster, to absolve the Communist Party and uphold the legacy of Stalin. As one Soviet author much later wrote: "All the grain without exception was requisitioned for the fulfillment of the Plan, including that set aside for sowing, fodder, and even that previously issued to the kolkhozniki as payment for their work." ", Duranty’s published denials of Ukraine’s Holodomor were perhaps the vilest acts of his career. Estimates before archival opening varied widely such as: 2.5 million (Volodymyr Kubiyovych);[75] 4.8 million (Vasyl Hryshko);[75] and 5 million (Robert Conquest). Threatened with seeing their children starve, many peasants gave in. [89], Scholars continue to debate whether the Holodomor was (on one extreme) man-made, intentional, and genocidal and (on the other) nature-made, unintentional, and ethnicity-blind. In parallel with the industrialization and collectivization drives, the Soviet regime commenced a campaign against “nationalist deviations” that escalated into a virtual assault on Ukrainian culture. However, as the Soviet Union consolidated its power, and Joseph Stalin ascended to the party’s top, these freedoms became expendable, and Ukrainian nationalism, at first exploited, now became viewed as a liability. ", Incredibly, Duranty was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for "dispassionate, interpretive reporting of the news from Russia.". Results for {phrase} ({results_count} of {results_count_total}), Displaying {results_count} results of {results_count_total}. This new campaign against the Ukrainian national movement had resulted in the annihilation of the Ukrainian central government as well as all Ukrainian cultural, educational, and social institutions. Ukrainians call this the Holodomor, translated by one modern Ukrainian dictionary as "artificial hunger, organized on a vast scale by the criminal regime against the country’s population," but often simply translated as "murder by hunger. Kaganovich returned in 1928 to Moscow; his place as party chief was taken by Stanislav Kosior, who was joined in 1933 by Pavel Postyshev as second secretary, who was sent from Moscow with a large contingent of Russian cadres. However, in August 1932 the Communist Party of the USSR had passed a law mandating the death penalty for theft of "social property." [citation needed], On 29 May 2008, the city of Baltimore held a candlelight commemoration for the Holodomor at the War Memorial Plaza in front of City Hall. The Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian nation organised by the Soviet regime had enormous consequences for Ukrainians. The women were lifting up their infants to the compartment windows—infants pitiful and terrifying with limbs like sticks, puffed bellies, big cadaverous heads lolling on thin necks. Then they went outside and searched the barn, pig pen, granary and the straw pile. At that time, Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union.About seven million people starved to death in the Holodomor.. Joseph Stalin was the leader and dictator of the Soviet Union, which was a communist country. On the kolkhozes, the government owned everything — the land, animals, equipment, and produce. Unable to get food, many ate whatever could pass for it — weeds, leaves, tree bark, and insects. All you had to say was that he had paid people to work for him as hired hands, or that he had owned three cows." Making matters worse, the collectives were organized by the Twenty-Five Thousanders, who, being urban youths, had no agricultural experience; their ignorance of farming basics often became the butt of jokes among local Ukrainians. To exploit Ukrainians’ long-standing resentment of Czarist domination, he permitted them to retain much of their national culture. The document specified that flags in Ukraine should fly at half-staff as a sign of mourning. By mid-January 1933, there were reports about mass "difficulties" with food in urban areas, which had been undersupplied through the rationing system, and deaths from starvation among people who were refused rations, according to the December 1932 decree of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party. In this regard, we note activities in observance of the seventieth anniversary of this Famine, in particular organized by the Government of Ukraine. In one hut they were cooking a mess that defied analysis. On the eve of the 87th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) has called on Ukrainians around the world to participate in commemoration events and sign a petition to include the word "Holodomor" in all … The bodies, many of which snow concealed until the spring thaw, were unceremoniously dumped into mass graves by the communists. [65][66][67][68] Former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko stated in a speech to the United States Congress that the Holodomor "took away 20 million lives of Ukrainians,"[69] while former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a public statement giving the death toll at about 10 million. Whether the Holodomor is a genocide is a significant issue in modern politics and there is no international consensus on whether Soviet policies would fall under the legal definition of genocide.[90][91]. By mid-March, most of the reports of starvation originated from Kyiv Oblast. And the famine of 1932-33 left peasants too weak to resist. By 1932, virtually all kulaks had been liquidated, but many of the remaining poor peasants still resisted communism and collectivization. The Great Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933", Ukraina w latach kolektywizacji i Wielkiego Glodu (1929–1933), "The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and its Demographic Significance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest", "Holodomor survivors share their stories", "Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute's MAPA Digital Atlas of Ukraine focus on the history of the Holodomor", "Gareth Jones' international exposure of the Holodomor, plus many related background articles". [115], On 22 November 2008, Ukrainian Canadians marked the beginning of National Holodomor Awareness Week. According to Marxist doctrine, however, all wealthier peasants (kulaks) were "bloodsuckers" and "parasites" who had grown rich by exploiting poorer peasants and who were now subverting collectivization. He reported: On a recent visit to the Northern Caucasus and the Ukraine, I saw something of the battle that is going on between the government and the peasants…. Other events in commemoration were held in other places around the United States as well. In conditions of harvest failure and increased poverty, lice are likely to increase. To instill additional fear, Soviet army units were brought in, lodging themselves in homes without permission. Overall change in birth and death amounts to 4.581 million fewer people but whether through factors of choice, disease or starvation will never be fully known. [120], On 2 June 2010, the Province of Quebec unanimously passed bill 390, "Memorial Day Act on the great Ukrainian famine and genocide (the Holodomor)". Robert Davies, Stephen Kotkin, and Stephen Wheatcroft consider the deaths largely unintentional, as Stalin acted to reduce them—but highly insufficiently. [20][21][22] Some scholars believe that the famine was planned by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement.[11][23]. The number of cases per head of population recorded in Ukraine in 1933 was already considerably higher than in the USSR as a whole. According to Soviet statistics, the migration balance for the population in Ukraine for 1927–1936 period was a loss of 1.343 million people. Odessa and Kyiv oblasts were second and third, respectively. According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kyiv in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficits. [88] In the same poll, 22.9% of those polled fully or partially agreed with the view that the famine was caused by natural circumstances, but 50.5% disagreed with that. Some peasants accused others merely out of envy or dislike. Torturous punishments were devised, such as "path treading," in which a resisting peasant would be forced to walk through the snow to the next village, there to be interrogated by its officials, and if he still refused to join a collective, walk to the next village. But since the kolkhozes failed to produce as predicted by Marxist theory, and with many peasants still refusing to join, Stalin sought a scapegoat. National Museum: Memorial in Commemoration of Famines' Victims in Ukraine, History of the Museum, Bradley, Lara. The event is considered a genocide by Ukraine,[102] a crime against humanity by the European Parliament,[103] and the lower house of parliament of Russia condemned the Soviet regime's "disregard for the lives of people". By the summer of 1932, 80 percent of Ukraine’s farmland had been forcibly collectivized. [116] In November 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited the Holodomor memorial in Kyiv, although Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych did not join him. A Chronicle of a Life 1952). Ironically, this process killed off the most productive farmers, guaranteeing a smaller harvest and a more impoverished Soviet Union. Ukraine - Ukraine - The famine of 1932–33: The result of Stalin’s policies was the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–33—a man-made demographic catastrophe unprecedented in peacetime. Since the peasantry constituted a demographic backbone of the Ukrainian nation,[87] the tragedy deeply affected the Ukrainians for many years. Snyder also estimates that of the million people who died in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from famine at the same time, approximately 200,000 were ethnic Ukrainians due to Ukrainian-inhabited regions being particularly hard hit in Russia. It didn’t work! In 1933, the recently elected administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt granted official U.S. recognition to the Soviet Union for the first time. But Ukraine's present leader Viktor Yanukovych echoes the Kremlin line, saying it was "incorrect and unjust" to consider the Holodomor "the genocide of a certain people". In Harvest of Sorrow, historian Robert Conquest, considered by many the leading authority on the famine, put the toll at 14.5 million. A clandestine organization, the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, was purportedly uncovered by the secret police in 1929. "[134] The Senate Resolution, S. Res. [47], The Soviet regime printed posters declaring: "To eat your own children is a barbarian act. If they found a suspicious-looking spot, in went the crow-bar. [34] Holodomor is now an entry in the modern, two-volume dictionary of the Ukrainian language, published in 2004, described as "artificial hunger, organised on a vast scale by a criminal regime against a country's population". Considered a tragedy or crime against humanity by, Luciuk, Lubomyr, editor, Holodomor: Reflections on the Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Soviet Ukraine, Kashtan Press, Kingston, 2008. A few people even resorted to cannibalism, eating those who had died and, in some cases, murdering those still living. During the famine, the Soviets prohibited foreign journalists from visiting Ukraine.