“In 2009, the Holodomor Museum published the book “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine”. The publication contained the work of the same name by the prominent lawyer and author of the term “genocide” Raphael Lemkin, translated into 28 languages. The book had a small circulation, it was not for sale, and only a limited number of copies were donated to Ukrainian and foreign libraries.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
In 2009, the Holodomor Museum published the book “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine”. The publication contained the work of the same name by the prominent lawyer and author of the term “genocide” Raphael Lemkin, translated into 28 languages. The book had a small circulation, it was not for sale, and only a limited number of copies were donated to Ukrainian and foreign libraries.
The publication of “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine” did not become a high-profile event either in Ukraine or, even more so, outside of it. Unfortunately, this text is better known among specialists in international law, and Lemkin’s name itself may mean nothing to most Ukrainians, despite the fact that he devoted his entire life to protecting national groups from destruction, and in recent years actively helped the Ukrainian diaspora to preserve the memory of about the Holodomor.
Why is Lemkin so important for Ukraine? He was the first to talk about the genocide of Ukrainians. On September 20, 1953, Raphael Lemkin spoke at a Ukrainian rally in New York, condemning the crimes of the Soviet regime. Later, he presented his arguments in the work “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine”.
Fifty years later, the independent Ukrainian state began a campaign to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide. However, in this campaign, we consciously or unconsciously abandoned the main arguments formulated by Lemkin. Currently, more than 30 countries of the world have recognized the Holodomor as genocide, most of them made their decisions after the start of the full-scale invasion. However, these decisions do not help us in punishing Russia for genocide and have rather a symbolic meaning. With the author’s concept of the crime of genocide on our side, we effectively threw his arguments into the trash.
Soviet genocide It may surprise you, but Raphael Lemkin, the author of the first draft of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, did not directly consider the Holodomor a genocide. According to his text “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine”, the starvation of peasants – “the most brutal manifestation of Soviet atrocities” was one of the stages of the Soviet genocide of Ukrainians, aimed not so much at suppressing peasant resistance to collectivization, but at destroying peasants as speakers of the language, keepers of music, folklore and Ukrainian traditions.
The first stage of the Soviet genocide of Ukrainians was destruction of the “brain of the nation” – teachers, writers, artists, thinkers and political figures. Starting with a fabricated process in the case of the so-called “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine” in the late 20s, this process lasted more than ten years. Its culmination was the shooting of hundreds of Ukrainian intellectuals in the Sandarmoh tract in November 1937.
Together with the “brain” Russia destroyed the “soul” of Ukraine – the church and the clergy. Tens of thousands of priests and members of their families were shot, exiled or deported. At the same time, Lemkin notes that the attack on the church “had and will have serious consequences for the “brain”, because a large part of intellectuals traditionally came from clergy families.
Starvation of peasants became the third and most devastating blow to Ukrainians: 3.9 million died as a result of the Holodomor. This is a proven number, but in reality there were much more victims, and we will never know their exact number. Ukrainian peasants were killed not because they rebelled or opposed collectivization and allegedly prevented the achievement of the five-year plans. They were killed because they did not agree to become Russians.
In the end, according to Lemkin, they became the fourth element of the genocide of Ukrainians forced relocations and deportations with the settlement of representatives of other nationalities on Ukrainian territories. This led to a significant decrease in the share of Ukrainians in the population of Ukraine.
What is wrong with the state policy regarding the HolodomorThe Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as actions aimed at total or partial destruction national, racial, ethnic or religious group.
Taken out of the context of Soviet policy, the Holodomor is not genocide, because it was aimed at the peasantry as a social, not a national, racial, ethnic or religious group. We will lose in every discussion with a Western professor, because we will not be able to prove that the Ukrainian peasantry is equal to a national group. Only by taking into account other elements of Soviet policy – the persecution and murder of Ukrainian artists, politicians, intellectuals and clergy – can it be argued that the Ukrainian nation was the object of the Holodomor. If it was possible to force collectivization and suppress resistance by other means, then the Soviet authorities resorted to their most terrible and terrifying weapon to destroy the Ukrainian spirit.
If 20 years ago, at the very beginning of the campaign for the recognition of the genocide of Ukrainians, we talked not only about the Holodomor, but about the Kremlin’s targeted campaign to destroy artists and clergy, about Bykivnia and Sandarmoch, about bans on writing and speaking Ukrainian, about the Sixties and rewriting history, maybe now it would not be so difficult for our Western partners to see the continuation of this policy in the actions of modern Russia.
Instead, today the Russian genocide in Ukraine is obvious to Ukrainians and certain Western intellectuals, but not obvious to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the leaders of our key partner states. That is why the International Criminal Court sees in the forcible abduction and transfer of Ukrainian children only war crimes and not genocide. And Western professors and all sorts of sabbaticals allow themselves to declare that not enough Ukrainians have died so far that Russia’s actions can be qualified as genocide.
Return to LemkinOn October 3 this year, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (CoE) adopted a resolution commemorating the anniversary of the Holodomor. This document differs from previous resolutions of the Council of Europe and decisions of parliaments of other countries. It is not the first time that it has been recorded at such a high level that the Holodomor was part of a campaign aimed at the destruction of Ukrainianness. In fact, the PACE resolution reproduces the arguments voiced by Raphael Lemkin in “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine”:
“The Assembly determines that the systematic destruction, first of all, of political and cultural leaders who served as the cultural core of the Ukrainian nation, and then of millions of ordinary Ukrainians, was deliberately conceived as an act of genocide. Genocide, as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, does not require the physical destruction of all members of the target group, it is enough to create such difficult conditions for existence that the very existence of this group as such, in whole or in part, is under threat”.
It is a pity that this resolution did not receive due attention in Ukraine, just like the publication of Lemkin at the time. 70 years ago R afael Lemkin comprehensively explained the reasons for today’s war. We cannot continue to ignore his arguments, because they are our strongest weapon in proving the genocidal character of the Russian Federation’s actions and punishing evil.
The text was prepared with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. The text represents the position of the author and does not necessarily reflect the position of the International Renaissance Foundation.
Halyna Chizyklawyer, executive director of the Raphael Lemkin Society