[aaus-list] Raphael Lemkin on Ukrainian Exclusivity

Sun Nov 23 23:02:38 EST 2008

For people who missed this earlier posting by Serbyn:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 12:06 PM, Roman Serbyn <serbyn.roman at videotron.ca> wrote:

> I have reproduced below, excerpts from "Soviet Genocide in the Ukraine", the
> last chapter of a monumental History of Genocide, written in the 1950s by
> the Jewish-Polish scholar Raphael Lemkin. Unfortunately, the monograph has
> not yet been published and the chapter on Ukraine is known only to a few
> Lemkin scholars. The whole chapter (12 double-spaced pages) on Ukraine will
> soon be published in the original English language in the USA and eventually
> in other languages, in other countries.
>
> Lemkin's text deserves special attention by the Ukrainian community as it
> commemorates the 75th anniversary of the tragic events. It should be noted
> that Lemkin, the developed the concept and coined the term "genocide",
> applies it to the destruction of the Ukrainian nation and not just Ukrainian
> peasants. Lemkin speaks of: a) the decimation of the Ukrainian national
> elites, b) destruction of the Orthodox Church, c) the starvation of the
> Ukrainian farming population, and d) its replacement with non-Ukrainian
> population from the RSFSR as integral components of the same genocidal
> process. The only dimension that is missing in Lemkin's excellent analysis
> is the destruction of the 8,000,000 ethnic Ukrainians living on the eve of
> the genocide in the Russian Republic (RSFSR).
>
> As Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora commemorates, in the coming months of
> October and Novembe,r the 75th anniversary of the Genocide against the
> Ukrainians, it should be inspired by the all-encompassing approach to the
> analysis of the great Ukrainian catastrophe by the father of the  concept of
> genocide and the man who did most to have it enshrined in the UN Convention
> of 1948. Lemkin's pereception of the Ukrainian genocide is a solid
> recommendation to the UN Assembly to finally recognize the Ukrainian tragedy
> for what it was — "a case of genocide, the destruction of a  nation."
>
> Roman Serbyn
>
> *************************
>
> RAFAEL LEMKIN
>
> SOVIET GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE
> (excerpts)
>
> […]
>
> What I want to speak about is perhaps the classic example of Soviet
> genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification – the
> destruction of the Ukrainian nation. […]
>
> […] As long as Ukraine retains its national unity, as long as its people
> continue to think of themselves as Ukrainians and to seek independence, so
> long Ukraine poses a serious threat to the very heart of Sovietism. It is no
> wonder that the Communist leaders have attached the greatest importance to
> the Russification of this independent[-minded] member of their "Union of
> Republics," have determined to remake it to fit their pattern of one Russian
> nation. For the Ukrainian is not and has never been, a Russian. His culture,
> his temperament, his language, his religion – all are different. […]
>
> Ukraine is highly susceptible to racial murder by select parts and so the
> Communist tactics there have not followed the pattern taken by the German
> attacks against the Jews. The nation is too populous to be exterminated
> completely with any efficiency. However, its leadership, religious,
> intellectual, political, its select and determining parts, are quite small
> and therefore easily eliminated, and so it is upon these groups particularly
> that the full force of the Soviet axe has fallen, with its familiar tools of
> mass murder, deportation and forced labor, exile and starvation.
>
> The attack has manifested a systematic pattern, with the whole process
> repeated again and again to meet fresh outburst of national spirit. The
> first blow is aimed at the intelligentsia, the national brain, so as to
> paralyze the rest of the body. […]
>
> Going along with this attack on the intelligentsia was an offensive against
> the churches, priests and hierarchy, the "soul" of Ukraine. Between 1926 and
> 1932, the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church, its Metropolitan
> (Lypkivsky) and 10,000 clergy were liquidated. […]
>
> […]
>
> The third prong of the Soviet plan was aimed at the farmers, the large mass
> of independent peasants who are the repository of the tradition, folk lore
> and music, the national language and literature, the national spirit, of
> Ukraine. The weapon used against this body is perhaps the most terrible of
> all – starvation. Between 1932 and 1933, 5,000,000 Ukrainians starved to
> death, an inhumanity which the 73rd Congress decried on May 28, 1934. There
> has been an attempt to dismiss this highpoint of Soviet cruelty as an
> economic policy connected with the collectivization of the wheatlands, and
> the elimination of the kulaks, the independent farmers was therefore
> necessary. The fact is, however, that large-scale farmers in Ukraine were
> few and far-between. As a Soviet writer Kossior [error: Kosior was party
> boss of Ukraine – R.S.] declared in Izvestiia on December 2, 1933,
> "Ukrainian nationalism is our chief danger," and it was to eliminate that
> nationalism, to establish the horrifying uniformity of the Soviet state that
> the Ukrainian peasantry was sacrificed. The method used in this part of the
> plan was not at all restricted to any particular group. All suffered – men,
> women, children. The crop that year was ample to feed the people and
> livestock of Ukraine, though it had fallen off somewhat from the previous
> year, a decrease probably due in large measure to the struggle over
> collectivization. But a famine was necessary for the Soviet[s] and so they
> got one to order, by plan, through an unusually high grain allotment to the
> state as taxes. To add to this, thousands of acres of wheat were never
> harvested, were left to rot in the fields. The rest was sent to government
> granaries to be stored there until the authorities had decided how to
> allocate it. Much of this crop, so vital to the lives of the Ukrainian
> people, ended up as exports for the creation of credits abroad.
>
> In the face of famine on the farms, thousands abandoned the rural areas and
> moved into the towns to beg [for] food. Caught there and sent back to the
> country, they abandoned their children in the hope that they at least might
> survive. In this way, 18,000 children were abandoned in Kharkiv alone.
> Villages of a thousand had a surviving population of a hundred; in others,
> half the populace was gone, and deaths in these towns ranged from 20 to 30
> per day. Cannibalism became commonplace.
>
> […]
>
> The fourth step in the process consisted in the fragmentation of the
> Ukrainian people at once by the addition to the Ukraine of foreign peoples
> and by the dispersion of the Ukrainians throughout Eastern Europe. In this
> way, ethnic unity would be destroyed and nationalities mixed. […]
>
> These have been the chief steps in the systematic destruction of the
> Ukrainian nation. Notably, there have been no attempts at complete
> annihilation, such as was the method of the German attack on the Jews. And
> yet, if the Soviet program succeeds completely, if the intelligentsia, the
> priests and the peasants can be eliminated, Ukraine will be as dead as if
> every Ukrainian were killed, for it will have lost that part of it which has
> kept and developed its culture, its beliefs, its common ideas, which have
> guided it and given it a soul, which, in short, made it a nation rather than
> a mass of people.
>
> The mass, indiscriminate murders have not, however, been lacking – they have
> simply not been integral parts of the plan, but only chance variations.
> Thousands have been executed, untold thousands have disappeared into the
> certain death of Siberian labor camps.
> […]
>
> […] This is not simply a case of mass murder. It is a case of genocide, of
> destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation. […]
> Soviet national unity is being created, not by any union of ideas and of
> cultures, but by the complete destruction of all cultures and of all ideas
> save one – the Soviet.
>
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-- 
Stephen Velychenko
CERES Associate;
Research Fellow,Chair of Ukrainian Studies;
Munk Center
University of Toronto
Devonshire Place
Toronto M5S 3K7