Holodomor: 90 years later, a genocide still taboo for part of the French left

Emmanuelle Ducros 08:44, March 29, 2023

Yesterday, French MEPs voted on a resolution recognising as genocide the episode of the Holodomor, which struck Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. A little-known drama in contemporary history.

Holodomor is a Ukrainian word meaning extermination by starvation. A little-known episode in Ukrainian history: that of the organization, by the Stalinist power, of a famine that killed between 2.5 and 5 million people in the country. The history of this Holodomor has long been denied, disguised, but the opening of archives at the fall of the USSR is not in doubt: it was not one of the endemic famines of the Soviet empire in the thirties. It was a deliberate, institutionalized policy aimed at breaking a national resistance in Ukraine, through hunger. For this, the Soviets collectivized land, requisitioned food, blocked villages, banned movement.

French MPs therefore recognize the Holodomor as genocide.

A strong demand from Ukraine, especially in these times of invasion and war led by Russia. The European Parliament recognized it as Genocide in 2022, like Germany, and about thirty countries in the world. There were no crowds of 170 deputies in the Assembly. But eight groups voted unanimously in favour. Two stood out for their refusal.

In the Communist Group, two Members voted against, the only ones to speak among the 22 members of this group. There are still Stalinist loyalties in this political family. What is much more striking is the absence of the Unsubmissive in this vote. Not one of the 74 members of the parliamentary group took part in the vote. Not one.

What for?

Officially, because, according to them, the extermination by famine concerned not only the Ukkrainians, but also other Soviet provinces. "No one can deny the reality of the crime" but "was it a question of exterminating the Ukrainian people as such?" asked LFI MP Bastien Lachaud.

It makes historians jump.

Yes, because for most of them it is in deliberately criminal decisions that the qualification of genocide is played out. And if there were indeed famines organized elsewhere by the Stalinist power, as in Kazakhstan, in the plains of the Don, and the Kuban, in Russia, Ukraine has undergone particular and very specific measures. Deportations of peasants to starve, for example.

But then why these modesty Insubordinate before this qualification of genocide.

Probably the same ones who, since the beginning of the war, have prevented the rebels from recognizing Vladimir Putin's criminal intentions in Ukraine. We don't want to upset the Russian dictator. The rebellious MEPs had also refused to vote, a few days before the outbreak of the war, aid to Ukraine. The RN had also refused to do so, but this time, it voted without batting an eyelid the qualification of genocide for the Holodomor.

It is annoying, after all, these scruples that LFI has in the face of genocides. In January 2022, LFI MPs had already abstained in the vote describing China's policy of extermination of the Uighurs as genocide. But here again, they had quibbled over the term Genocide, which should not be "devalued" in view of the genocides of Jews, Armenians and Tutsis, recognized by the UN.

For people who only have the defense of the oppressed and minorities in their mouths, and who cry dictatorship as soon as they have the opportunity to describe their own country, it is still disorder.