DISINFO: The myth of Holodomor was created by Russophobic Ukrainians to demonize Russia
SUMMARY
The decision of the French National Assembly to vote on March 28 on a resolution describing the "Holodomor" as genocide is unfounded and provocative. The notion of the Holodomor is a politico-ideological creature devised by ultranationalist and Russophobic Ukrainian forces to demonise Russia and attract support from the international community.
[....] at that time the great famine affected not only Ukraine, but also other agricultural regions of the USSR, including the North Caucasus, the middle and lower Volga, part considerable extent of the Central Chernozem Oblast [region], Kazakhstan, Western Siberia and the Southern Urals. Millions of Soviet citizens fell victim of it.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring Kremlin negation of the Holodomor in Ukraine using the concept of Russophobia to dismiss it.
The Holodomor was an man-made famine deliberately caused by Stalin with the aim of removing a perceived Ukrainian threat to the Soviet regime. The Soviet state took away livestock, crops and seeds from the peasants claiming they had "plundered" state property. The Soviet law on the seizure of food from peasants was adopted in 1932 and is known as the "Five Spikelet Law". Anyone who gathered several ears of wheat on the collective farm field was a culprit of "theft of state property". The punishment for theft of kolkhoz or cooperative property was the death sentence. This law was personally attributed to Joseph Stalin.
The famine of 1932-1933 claimed the lives of 7 to 10 million citizens of the Soviet Union; the disaster affected in large parts but not only Ukraine but also parts of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Russia.
The claim that remembering Holodomor would be Russophobia because modern Russia claims Soviet heritage is unfounded. The use of the term Russophobia is often, as showed Dr Timothy Snyder, a notion used to justify past or future crimes: "russophobia, has been exploited during this war as a form of imperial propaganda in which the aggressor claims to be the victim. It has served this last year as a justification for Russian war crimes in Ukraine.”
The Holodomor is well documented and confirmed by a huge array of declassified documents, including official documents of the Soviet authorities and the Communist Party. In 2006, the Verkhovna Rada officially recognised the Holodomor of 1932-33 as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. In 2022 15 UN member states and the Vatican state recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide in Ukraine. In 2023 several other states joined this recognition and remembrance : France joined Iceland, which recognized the Holodomor as a genocide on March 23, and Belgium, which did so on March 10. The European Parliament and PACE have recognized the Holodomor as a crime of the Soviet regime against their own people and a crime against humanity.
Read also related cases : The claim Ukrainians were targeted during the 1932-33 famine is false , Holodomor famine was largely caused by the West , Holodomor was a story invented by a British spy , Russophobic historical concepts, including so-called holodomor-genocide, have brought Ukraine to a civil war , The famine of 1932-33 was not ethnically directed against Ukrainians.