The monument to the victims of the Holodomor on November 26, 2022 in Kyiv
Image: AP
Moscow sees calling the Holodomor a genocide a “russophobic” revision of history. But it is certain that Stalin was after the Ukrainians.
MIn mid-October, the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti circulated a short video showing the dismantling of the monument to the victims of the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Russian-occupied Mariupol. Commenting on the pictures, a historian explains that, according to historical sources, the south of Russia and the Soviet Union was regularly hit by famine at intervals of several decades. “It wasn’t Ukraine at all that suffered the most from the hunger of 1932-33,” he continues, adding that other regions of the Soviet Union were much worse hit.
A young woman says it’s not a monument being demolished, but “a symbol of political disinformation.” In Ukraine, the idea of a genocide, the Holodomor, was forced on young people in history classes at school. “No teachers, no textbook has described what really happened,” she says. That was “unfortunately everything was hidden from the eyes of the people”.