Holodomor: the secret holocaust: when Ukraine resisted Soviet attempts at collectivization in the 1920s and '30s, the Soviets used labor camps, executions, and starvations, and starvation to kill millions of Ukrainians.(HISTORY--STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM)

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In 1933, the recently elected administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt granted official U.S. recognition to the Soviet Union for the first time. Especially repugnant was that this recognition was granted even though Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had just concluded a campaign of genocide against Ukraine that left over 10 million dead. This atrocity was known to the Roosevelt administration, but not to the American people at large, thanks to suppression of the story by the Western press--as we shall show.

Ukraine's Untold Tragedy

The Ukrainian genocide remains largely unknown. After 76 years, the blood of the victims still cries for truth, and the guilt of the perpetrators for exposure.

Many Americans are barely acquainted with Ukraine, even though it is Europe's second largest country after Russia, and has been a distinct land and people for centuries. One reason for this unfamiliarity is that Ukraine has rarely known political independence; it was under Russia's heel throughout much of its existence--under Soviet domination prior to 1991, and under Czarist Russia before that. Many American students heard little or nothing of Ukraine in their history classes because the nation had been relegated to the status of a Russian "province."

Stalin accomplished genocide against Ukraine by two means. One was massive executions and deportations to labor camps. But his second tool of murder was more unique: an artificial famine created by confiscation of all food. Ukrainians call this the Holodomor, translated by one modern Ukrainian dictionary as "artificial hunger, organized on a vast scale by the criminal regime against the country's population," but often simply translated as "murder by hunger."

Ukraine was the last place one would have expected famine, for it had been known for centuries as the "breadbasket of Europe." French diplomat Blaise de Vigenere wrote in 1573: "Ukraine is overflowing with honey and wax.... The soil of this country is so good and fertile that when you leave a plow in the field, it becomes overgrown with grass after two or three days. It will be difficult to find." The 18th-century British traveler Joseph Marshall wrote: "The Ukraine is the richest province of the Russian empire.... The soil is a black loam.... I think I have never seen such deep plowing as these peasants give their ground."