President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has promised to complete the construction of a museum complex dedicated to the Holodomor-Genocide.

The head of state made such a statement on November 28. 

“The project of the National Museum“ Holodomor-Genocide ”is very important for Ukraine: for our history and future.

There were certain problems with financing this project.

However, such projects must be performed without fail.

I gave instructions to the Cabinet of Ministers, and this issue will be resolved on Monday.

The project will definitely be completed, "Zelensky said. 

Addressing the citizens directly, he focused on the fact that the Holodomor claimed the lives of millions of Ukrainians.

According to Zelensky, the death toll from mass starvation in Ukraine is comparable to the losses suffered by the republic in World War II.

“How can you strive to destroy an entire people?

Why and what for?

We can never understand.

We can never forget this.

We can never forgive this, ”Zelensky said.

  • Memorial sign to the victims of the Holodomor on Mikhailovskaya Square in Kiev

  • © president.gov.ua

However, some Ukrainian media outlets criticized the president's speech, considering it not harsh enough.

So, the journalists of the Espreso TV channel reproached Zelensky for not mentioning "Soviet Russia", "Soviet occupation" and the communist ideology now banned in Ukraine, which, in their opinion, are the "instigators of the tragedy."

In a conversation with RT, RANEPA teacher Sergei Margulis noted that radical forces in Ukraine are constantly attacking the president for being overly "loyal", from their point of view, to the Soviet past and the Russian Federation.

“But in fact, Kiev, as before, continues to associate the crimes of the Stalinist regime with modern Russia.

And Zelensky, like other politicians in Ukraine, also equates here, "Margulis said.

"The Holodomor was not of a national character"

In the first half of the 1930s, a mass famine began in the USSR due to the mistakes of the economic policy of the Soviet government.

Its victims were millions of residents of Ukraine, Belarus, the Volga region, the Central Black Earth Region, the North Caucasus, the Urals, Western Siberia and Kazakhstan.

However, the Kiev authorities interpret the Holodomor as a deliberate destruction of the Ukrainian people.

According to the Institute of Demography and Social Research named after M.V.

Ptukhi of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, it was the Ukrainian SSR that suffered the greatest human losses.

As calculated by Ukrainian scientists, 3.9 million residents of the republic died from the Holodomor.

“According to the results of the research, the thesis that Ukraine and Russia suffered the same during the famine were refuted: in Russia, regions with high losses from hunger account for 6% of the rural population and 1% of the territory, while in Ukraine - 41% of the population and 34% territory ", - approved on the website of the Institute of Demography and Social Research named after M.V.

Ptukhi.

Russian historical science does not deny the fact that Ukraine suffered more than other republics of the USSR.

According to Russian scientists, the victims of the famine in the Ukrainian SSR were 3–3.5 million people.

At the same time, Russian researchers reject the thesis of the "genocide of the Ukrainian people." 

Domestic researchers point out that in 1932-1933, other republics also suffered colossal human losses.

For example, according to Valentina Zhiromskaya, chief researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, at least 2.5 million people died of hunger in the early 1930s on the territory of the RSFSR.

As previously calculated by the scientists of the Moscow State University, based on a comparative analysis of the census materials of 1926 and 1937, during the Holodomor, in terms of shares in the famine-stricken rural areas of the USSR, the greatest population decline was usually observed in regions outside Ukraine.

In particular, in Kazakhstan this figure was 30.9%, in the Volga region - 23%, in the North Caucasus - 20.4%, and in Ukraine - by 20.5%.

As the director general of the Institute of Regional Problems, Doctor of Historical Sciences Dmitry Zhuravlev said in an interview with RT, allegations of "genocide" are a "political myth" of independent Ukraine.

According to the expert, it is blasphemous for Kiev to politicize the tragedy of the Holodomor, given the dire consequences of this phenomenon for Russia and Kazakhstan.

“The Holodomor was not of a national character, no one specifically killed the Ukrainians with hunger.

Huge human losses were observed both in Kazakhstan and in Russia.

The tragedy that happened was largely a consequence of the mistakes of the authorities, but they were committed in relation to the inhabitants of the entire USSR, "Zhuravlev emphasized.

Moreover, studies by Russian scientists show that the top leadership of the Soviet Union, including Joseph Stalin, actively helped Ukraine in 1932-1933 to the detriment of Russian regions.

According to Moscow State University scientists, at the initial stage of the Holodomor Ukraine suffered greatly from a shortage of bread, but already in 1933 the republic received 501 thousand tons of grain in the form of loans, which was 7.5 times more than in the previous year.

At the same time, the government of the USSR transferred 990 thousand tons of grain to Russia with a multiple of its population, which is only 1.5 times more than in 1932.

In addition, during the Holodomor, agricultural machinery was redistributed in favor of Ukraine.

According to the decree of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated June 1, 1933, 5.5 thousand tractors were sent to the Ukrainian SSR - 45.4% of the total number of machines that were to be transferred to agricultural farms of the Soviet Union.

  • Monument to victims of mass famine in the USSR in Kazakhstan

  • © Wikimedia commons

In an interview with RT, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of Moscow State University, Alexander Kobrinsky, noted that since the 1990s, Ukrainian science, following the authorities, has been trying to rewrite history to fit the "political environment."

According to the ideological paradigm adopted by Kiev, Ukraine was allegedly in an oppressed position during the Soviet period.

“But objective facts testify otherwise.

I am already silent about the abundance of ethnic Ukrainians in the leadership of the USSR throughout its 70-year history.

Why don't they talk about it in Ukraine?

Because it turns out that people from the party elite of the Ukrainian SSR are to blame for the mass famine of the 1930s, that is, the ethnic Ukrainians themselves, and not Russia, ”says Kobrinsky.

"Fraud is being used"

The Holodomor was recognized by Kiev as “genocide of the Ukrainian people” in 2006 during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko.

In November 2008, Dmitry Medvedev, who at that time was the president of the Russian Federation, sent a message to Yushchenko, in which he explained Moscow's position on this issue.

In it, the Russian leader said that "those who smuggle through the thesis about the" Holodomor-genocide "are least of all interested in scientific accuracy."

“There are juggling and juggling, falsification of data on the number of victims.

Public statements by representatives of the country's leadership also contribute to the creation of a distorted picture, ”Medvedev wrote, at the same time reproaching his Ukrainian colleague for disseminating erroneous demographic data.

The historical disputes between Russia and Ukraine over the mass famine of 1932-1933 continued after the Maidan.

In 2016, the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko instructed the country's Foreign Ministry to fight for international recognition of the Holodomor as a "genocide of the Ukrainian people."

At the end of November 2017, the Ukrainian leader called on the Russian Federation, as the successor to the USSR, to repent for organizing the mass famine.

In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry noted that Kiev is trying to politicize history and sow "mistrust and hostility in the relations between the two countries, to embroil the peoples of Ukraine and Russia."

"This is a common tragedy of Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs and other peoples inhabiting the Soviet Union, and, of course, the largest humanitarian catastrophe on the territory of the USSR, in which, according to various estimates, from two to eight million people have suffered," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on the official Twitter page.

Alexander Kobrinsky believes that the rewriting of history, which Kiev is engaged in, is more aimed at the "ideological re-education" of youth.

According to the expert, "today everything is being done in Ukraine to tear the younger generation away from Russia."

In turn, Dmitry Zhuravlev believes that Kiev's anti-Soviet rhetoric on the problem of the mass famine of 1932-1933 pursues not only ideological goals, but also quite specific political tasks.

In particular, through distorting the facts, the Ukrainian authorities expect to blacken modern Russia, which allegedly hinders the development of post-Maidan Ukraine, the expert argues. 

“The essence of the Kiev propaganda of the“ genocide-famine ”is that Russia, they say, deliberately starved the Ukrainians and is now continuing about the same policy.

But this statement is so absurd that I do not think that Kiev will achieve anything in this field.

All this hysteria in real life, where Ukraine is experiencing a huge number of urgent internal problems, does not work, ”summed up Zhuravlev.