Holodomor is a portmanteau derived from the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor).1
Joseph Stalin’s socialist plan to collectivize all agriculture caused widespread famine in Ukraine. That man-made famine claimed approximately four million lives.
Leading up to the famine in Ukraine, Nikita Khruschev was assigned the roles of Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Ukraine and First Secretary of the Ukrainian Central Committee. Khruschev wrote to Stalin requesting ration cards for the Ukrainian people who needed food to produce food Stalin wanted for the Russian people.
Khruschev went to the Ukraine as Stalin’s unquestioning and quite ruthless agent. His wartime experiences taken together with his close-up view of the suffering of the people had their effect.2 Khrushchev became a humanitarian who actually cared for the people under his watch.
As horrific as famine can be there was something even more horrible: cannibalism. I quote from the book Khrushchev Remembers.
“Kirichenko…told me he had gone to a collective farm to check on how the people were surviving the winter. He was told to go see a woman who worked there:
I found a scene of horror. The woman had the corpse of her own child on the table and was cutting it up. She was chattering away as she worked, ‘We’ve already eaten Manechka [Little Maria]. Now we’ll salt down Vanechka [Little Ivan]. This will keep us for some time.’ Can you imagine? This woman had gone crazy with hunger and butchered her own children!”3
The Bottom Line
The Ukrainians have known the horrors of communism, Stalinism, famine, cannibalism, wholesale death of their countrymen, all at the hands of Russian masters. One can readily understand how President Zelenskyy can stand tall against the threats and the tyranny of Putin.
Mr. Putin is a criminal thug who deals with his detractors by killing them, even those living in foreign countries.
The legacy, if I can call it that, of communist Russia is solid resolve by the Ukrainian people to withstand Putin’s unprovoked attack on their homeland. Putin savagely kills children, mothers, grandparents, all non-combatants. He ruthlessly bombs civilian residences, apartment buildings, and a maternity hospital.
Holodomor number two is now live on television for all the world to see. And then we have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to preserve the peace.
John White
Rockwall, Texas
John N. White 