The Holodomors of the 20th Century
25.11.2024
“The Holodomors of the 20th Century Are a Genocide of a Nation,” the topic of the video meeting-requiem, held on November 23, 2024.
Its active participants were teachers and students of the Professional College and Starobilsk Professional College of LTSNU. The meeting was dedicated to the 91st anniversary of the Holodomor events of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. The organizer of the video meeting was history teacher Oleksandr Karpenko.
Ukrainians, according to the Decree of the President of Ukraine of 1998 “On the Establishment of the Remembrance Day of the Holodomor Victims”, commemorate those innocently killed by the Stalinist totalitarian regime on the fourth Saturday of November. This year this day falls on November 23. But for the third time this is happening in the conditions of the Russian-Ukrainian war. And that is why living memory is extremely important. What convinces us so much of the complex historical present. All crimes must be solved, criminals punished, and victims duly honored. Crimes have no statute of limitations. Everyone should remember this well. And especially every tyrant and dictator, regardless of when he was in power. Such is the truth.
The 20th century was quite difficult for Ukrainians. They tried to destroy Ukrainians as a nation. They did it quite cruelly. Over the 25 years of the 20th century, there were three famines on the fertile Ukrainian land: 1921-1923, 1932-1933, 1946-1947. They became examples of genocide. It was economic genocide and political genocide. It was the price for trying to win their own statehood and be the master of Ukrainian land. But it was not destined to happen. Stalin and his political entourage had a different opinion. Over the 25 years, the Ukrainian people lost more than seven million people through direct losses alone.
And therefore, on the Day of Remembrance of the Holodomor Victims, teams from two educational institutions had the opportunity to investigate the causes, course and consequences of the holodomors-genocides. They shared their own stories about how their ancestors experienced tragic events. Complete collectivization was evil for the hardworking Ukrainian peasant, but he was driven to the collective farm and forced to work hard for workdays, losing all his own property, which was taken to the collective farm. And so it was for more than one dozen years.
The totalitarian system covered up its own criminal actions, telling the whole world that there was no famine in Ukraine. And so it was in 1921-1923, and in 1932-1933, and in 1946-1947. And only the years of Ukraine’s state independence gave the first opportunity to properly honor the victims of the famines. In 1993, the first monument to the victims of the famines in Ukraine was opened on the fertile Lubny land. Now there are dozens of them in large and small cities and towns of our country and abroad. In 2008, President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko signed a decree “On the recognition of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as genocide. As of October 2024, 28 countries of the world and their parliaments have recognized this as such. Among the first three were: Estonia, Australia, Canada.
On this day of honoring the innocent victims of the famine, students and teachers joined the action “Light a candle in memory of the Holodomor victims. Fight for Ukraine and support the soldiers.”
Today is convincing that even after centuries, Ukrainians are overcoming the trials that their ancestors inflicted on them centuries ago. After all, no one is immune from cruel and ill-considered methods aimed at continuing the destruction of Ukrainians at any cost solely for the fact that they are Ukrainians.
