The National Assembly calls the Holodomor, the deadly famine of the 1930s in Ukraine, a genocide

The National Assembly recognized, Tuesday, March 28, as a genocide the Holodomor, this famine caused at the beginning of the 1930s in Ukraine by the Soviet authorities, at the origin of the death of several million people.

In a resolution adopted almost unanimously (168 votes against 2), the deputies called on the government to do the same, to meet the high expectation of Kiev about this painful memory, revived by the Russian invasion of the country .

“Gratitude to the deputies of the National Assembly for this historic decision”reacted the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a tweet published in French shortly after the vote.

France has just recognized #Holodomor of 1932-33 as genocide of the people ??. Recognition to MPs for… https://t.co/kWoZ5g7PD6

— ZelenskyyUa (@Володимир Зеленський)

Two communist deputies vote against

The Holodomor (“extermination by starvation”), “It’s the story of organized barbarism” And “the use of starvation as a political weapon”, pleaded the first signatory of the adopted text, the deputy Renaissance Anne Genetet. She punctuated her intervention of one “Long live free Ukraine”in the presence of the Ukrainian Ambassador to France.

The text had been co-signed by members of seven of the ten political groups in the Assembly, with the exception of the groups La France insoumise (LFI), Communist and National Rally (RN).

The “rebellious” did not take part in the vote, believing that there were doubts about the genocidal nature of these events under international law. “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.

The Communists are the only ones to have voted against, considering that parliamentarians were not legitimate to replace historians and judges. “We refuse to contribute to the politicization of issues of memory and history”explained MP Jean-Paul Lecoq.

The adopted text “officially recognizes the genocidal character of the famine forced and planned by the Soviet authorities against the Ukrainian population in 1932 and 1933”. He ” sentenced “ these acts and “affirms its support for the Ukrainian people in their aspiration to have the mass crimes committed against them by the Soviet regime recognized”.

The government invited to act on the qualification of genocide

The Assembly invites the government, too, to take note of this qualification of genocide and asks it to“encourage free access to Holodomor archives on the international scene, particularly in the Russian Federation” to document the facts.

The Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade, Olivier Becht, spoke to the deputies about the “obvious resonance with current events” of their resolution. He supported her, even though he “It is not in the habits of the government to recognize as genocide acts which have not been previously qualified as such by a court”.

Nicknamed “the granary of Europe” for the fertility of its black soils, Ukraine lost several million inhabitants in the great famine of 1932-1933, against a backdrop of land collectivization, orchestrated according to historians by Stalin to repress any desire for independence in this country, then a Soviet republic. In mid-Decemberthe European Parliament had also called the Holodomor a genocide.

Russia, it categorically denies this classification, citing the fact that the great famine of the 1930s had not only made victims Ukrainians, but also Russians, Kazakhs, and among other peoples.