The poll was conducted by the Rating Sociological Group this November.
The results of the poll were published prior to Holodomor Remembrance Day which is marked annually on the last Saturday of November. Traditionally on that day, the nationwide minute of silence is announced at 12 o’clock in the afternoon to pay tribute to millions who died during the years of the famine. Churches hold religious services. Museums organize thematic exhibits and other events which are dedicated to this tragic page of Ukrainian history.
The action called Light a Candle of Memory is held on the day of remembrance. Thousands of candles are lit simultaneously at memorials dedicated to Holodomor victims and in homes of Ukrainians all over the country.
The Holodomor was a man-made famine that engulfed the entire territory of the Ukrainian SSR (the then Soviet Ukraine) and lasted from 1932 to 1933. Millions of people perished though no precise data exists as to the total number of deaths. Thus, demographers claim that from two and a half to ten million people died during those terrible years in Ukraine.
In 2006, Ukraine declared the Holodomor an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.
Archive records declassified at the end of 1980s provided historians with irrefutable evidence that the 1932-1933 famine had been man-made by the Stalin regime. So, the genocide was a deliberate act aimed at the annihilation of the Ukrainian people. And first of all, it was directed against the peasantry, Ukrainian farmers, who put up fierce opposition to attempts to inculcate communist ideology in their minds.
Besides, all of them without exception spoke the Ukrainian language and therefore were carriers of Ukrainian national identity. To break their opposition, the authorities sent troops to encircle entire villages. People were forbidden to leave their homes and their grain crops were confiscated, an inhuman measure which led to imminent death from hunger.
Addressing Ukrainians on November 27, Holodomor Remembrance Day, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, “We still do not know the names of many Ukrainians who died from the Holodomor. It destroyed entire families, streets, villages. So there is no one to ask. But it could not destroy us completely. So there is someone to remember. And there is someone to pass the memory to the next generations. … We as a nation have survived this horror. The key word is “survived”. And we won. And the innocent victims of the Holodomor were tortured, murdered, but have not been forgotten!
“Having lost millions in the last century, Ukraine has proved that we are the nation which cannot be conquered even by a total hunger.”
On the eve of the day of remembrance, the President signed a decree on holding a string of memorial events dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the 1932-1933 Holodomor. The president instructed the government to set up an organizing committee to prepare and hold the future anniversary events. Thus, the anniversary program will consist of many important and interesting activities. Thus, an international forum featuring the Holodomor is to be held in 2023 to commemorate the anniversary; scholars who study man-made famines will meet for discussions; social ads will be widely broadcast by the media.
The presidential decree also emphasizes the importance of finding the burial places of the killed by hunger, restoring and protecting the existing memorials to Holodomor victims and unveiling new ones in other countries.
From 1985 to 1988, the commission of the U.S. Congress studied the man-made famine in Ukraine. The report of the commission reads, “Joseph Stalin and his circle committed an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people in 1932-33.” The conclusions of the commission paved the way for the recognition of the Holodomor as genocide by the international community.
In subsequent years, parliaments of such countries as the United States, Estonia, Australia, Canada, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, Poland, Peru, Paraquay, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, and Portugal passed relevant acts condemning the Holodomor as an act of genocide against humanity. Some countries made decisions condemning the crime of genocide at regional and municipal levels.
It was very important that such prestigious international organizations as the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the UN Human Rights Council recognized the Holodomor in Ukraine as genocide.
In 2016, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Ukrainian Parliament) appealed to all democratic nations to continue the procedure of recognizing the 1932-33 Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people.
On November 24, U.S. President Joe Biden made a special statement to honor the memory of Holodomor victims and expressed his support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The American President said in his statement, “Each November we solemnly honor and pay tribute to the millions of innocent Ukrainians who suffered and perished during the Holodomor – “death by hunger” – in 1932 and 1933. The men, women, and children who lost their lives during this famine were victims of the brutal policies and deliberate acts of the regime of Joseph Stalin.”
President Biden went on to say, “The Ukrainian people overcame the horror of the Holodomor, demonstrating their spirit and resilience, and eventually creating a free and democratic society.”
The European Union also paid tribute to all those who were killed by the crimes of the Stalin regime.
Estonian diplomat Matti Maasikas, who heads the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, stressed in his statement on behalf of the European Union, “On the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Holodomor, we join the Ukrainian people in honoring the memory of all those who died because of the terrible crimes committed by the Soviet regime and caused millions of losses among Ukrainians.”
As far as the Russian Federation is concerned, its authorities have been categorical for the past three decades in denying the fact of genocide against the Ukrainian people. They claim that the famine was allegedly the result of a crop failure caused by unfavourable weather conditions at the time. In response to such allegations by the Kremlin, the Foreign Office of Ukraine has declared that Russia’s denying the Holodomor of 1932-33 as genocide against the Ukrainian people is comparable to committing a crime.
The newspaper Voice of Ukraine
