The Holodomor, the great Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, is on the agenda of the French National Assembly. MEPs are preparing to examine a motion for a resolution on the recognition as genocide of this tragedy which caused 3.5 to 4 million deaths in Ukraine.
After the German Bundestag and the European Parliament at the end of last year, and very recently the Belgian Chamber, it is the turn of the French Parliament to decide on this historic event to which the war waged by Russia in Ukraine gives particular echo.
When he traveled through Ukrainian lands during his trip to the USSR, at the invitation of the Soviet authorities, in August-September 1933, Édouard Herriot, the mayor of Lyon, saw nothing, or wanted to see, of the drama which was then playing. Famine against a backdrop of collectivization of the land, orchestrated by Stalin, decimated millions of homes there.
Ninety years later, the French deputies who must examine the “proposal for resolution n°770 to recognize and condemn the Holodomor as genocide “, will perhaps have in mind the blindness of this figure of the radical party, who was president of the National Assembly. ” It is important that the National Assembly, for its own honor, votes for this resolution », Says the ecologist deputy Aurélien Tâche, stressing that Édouard Herriot « played an active role in covering up the genocidal nature of the Holodomor “.
This qualification is still debated. This is one of the reasons why the legislative process has taken time, explains the elected representative behind the draft resolution, Anne Genetet, Renaissance MP for the 11th constituency of French people living outside France, which notably includes Ukraine and Russia. ” During my previous mandate, I had already been alerted by the French and Ukrainians to this deep Ukrainian wound “, explains the chosen one. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the visit of a delegation of French parliamentarians in September accelerated things: ” Vodolymyr Zelensky, whom we met, asked us that France recognize the Holodomor as a genocide. It took a little time, because there was a doubt about the qualification », continues Anne Genetet.
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The intention of extermination of the Ukrainian peasant population by the Soviet authorities, by provoking this famine, is discussed by the specialists. In 2008, the European Parliament called it ” appalling crime perpetrated against the Ukrainian people and against humanity “, before recognizing the” genocide », last December, after the German Bundestag and before the Belgian Chamber.
The debate between historians is not settled, some arguing in particular that the Ukraine is not the only one to have been the victim of forced collectivization and dekulakization, that is to say the expropriation of the private property of the kulaks for the benefit of the kolkhozes in Stalinist Russia, nor the only one to have suffered punitive measures. Peasants in the Don and Kuban plains, and those in Kazakhstan, were also affected.
Debates on the characterization of the crime
“ Where the qualification of genocide is played out, it is in deliberately intentionally criminal decisions “says Thomas Chopard, historian, specialist in the history of Soviet Ukraine. And to enumerate: The fact of organizing a blockade of Ukraine and of deporting, from January 1933, the starving peasants who had tried to flee Ukraine to starve them to death, the harvests of sowing and livestock from November 1932, specific to Ukraine, which cannot be found elsewhere, including Kazakhstan, and finally, the so-called “blackboard” technique, which consists of transforming either a village, or a canton, or a farm collective in a blocked village. »
What distinguishes the Ukrainian famine is ” the concomitance of this attack against the Ukrainian peasantry which represented the major part of the Ukrainian population, with an attack carried out against the Ukrainian church and against the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Somehow we attacked the body as well as the mind and the brain “, explains Iryna Dmytrychyn, head of Ukrainian studies at Inalco (National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations), who recalls that Joseph Stalin, who saw in the Ukrainian national element one of the reasons for the resistance of peasants to follow his policy , put an end to Ukrainianization and launched the Russification of these regions.
This deadly famine has long been passed over in silence. The Soviet power hid and denied it, helped in this by Western personalities such as Édouard Herriot or the correspondent at the time of the New York Times in Moscow, Walter Duranty.
Today, Russia still disputes its genocidal nature, highlighting the relative importance of the various factors that caused the famine. In Ukraine, on the other hand, the Holodomor is a central event in collective memory, a pillar of the national narrative. In the wake of the Orange Revolution, in 2006, the Rada adopted a law qualifying this ” extermination by starvation ” of ” genocide “.
During the time of the USSR, his memory first spread through the Ukrainian diaspora in the West. In France, it was notably worn by Natalia Pasternak, now deceased. Her husband, Jean-Pierre, remembers that his wife regularly went to see the deputies and senators, with under her arm a book on the Holodomor, published by the World Congress of Ukrainians.
” It was still a little too early “, he notes, recalling that fifteen years ago, a draft resolution had collected only 37 votes. ” This is part of the dark pages of Ukraine, so this recognition is very important for Ukrainians to enable them to move forward and build the future of Ukraine. », says Jean-Pierre Pasternak. Ukrainians see in the recognition of the Holodomor “ the beginnings of a recognition of what is happening today “says Iryna Dmytrychyn.
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Current resonances
The recognition of the Holodomor as genocide by the French National Assembly takes on a particular dimension in the context of the war in Ukraine. ” Publicizing the conflicting history of Russian-Ukrainian relations, with Moscow’s recurrent denial of the Ukrainian national fact, is important for maintaining the support of Western public opinion, which is decisive for the outcome of the armed conflict. “, explain Anne Genetet and the socialist deputy Boris Vallaud, in a press release. The ecologist Aurélien Tâché highlights the current political resonance of the Holodomor, for which, ” the war waged by Vladimir Putin is of a genocidal nature : deportation of children or destruction of places of culture are elements that contribute to a desire to truly erase the Ukrainian identity and its people “.
Today, the terms crimes against humanity, even genocide, regularly reappear in the speeches of the Ukrainian authorities to describe the torture inflicted on civilians by the Russian forces, the murders, the rapes or the deportations of children. ” Today, we have a war which aims to destroy Ukraine, its identity, to Russify the Ukrainians. Somewhere, this is already what was happening in 1932-33 “, underlines Pierre Ramain, secretary of the association For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours, signatory from a stand in The world denouncing the abductions, transfers to Russia and forced adoptions of Ukrainian children, as ” a genocidal project designed by Vladimir Putin and his inner circle “.
The Anne Genetet approach is part of a desire to ” to denounce the crimes of Stalinism “at a time when” Vladimir Putin tries to rehabilitate him “. Would it have had any chance of succeeding before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, or even in the first months of the war, at a time when attempts at dialogue with Moscow were still valid? ? ” As much as I am certain that we would have had the very broad signature of the whole hemicycle during the previous mandate, but I think that I would have encountered a form of resistance from the side of the Quai d’Orsay “says the MP.
” The “rediscovery” of the famine has played a crucial role in the political debate, in the confrontation between supporters of a break with Russia and supporters of maintaining close ties with the “Russian big brother”. writes historian Nicolas Werth. In the National Assembly, the text should receive the votes of the representatives of the main parliamentary groups. They are all among the signatories, with the exception of France Insoumise, the National Rally and the Communists.
The event is likely to irritate Moscow. Should there be a link? Monday, March 27, the website of the National Assembly was targeted by pro-Russian hackers. A denial of service attack triggered by an influx of requests » blocked the site for a few hours. It was claimed by the hacker collective Noname057.
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