Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "'Near apocalyptic': Reporter reacts to conditions for Ukrainians living in subways" video.

  1. Holodomor. Never forget!!! Glory to Ukraine!!!! 🇺🇦 🇺🇲
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  2. A UN official has said that Russian forces are stealing and destroying grain in Ukraine, which may result in food shortages there and around the world. Warnings of famine carry an echo of the Holodomor, when the Soviet Union's decision-making resulted in the deaths of some 5 million people across the U.S.S.R., at least 3.9 million of whom were Ukrainian. Holodomor, man-made famine that convulsed the Soviet republic of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, peaking in the late spring of 1933. It was part of a broader Soviet famine (1931–34) that also caused mass starvation in the grain-growing regions of Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan. The Ukrainian famine, however, was made deadlier by a series of political decrees and decisions that were aimed mostly or only at Ukraine. In acknowledgement of its scale, the famine of 1932–33 is often called the Holodomor, a term derived from the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor). The origins of the famine lay in the decision by Stalin to collectivize agriculture in 1929. Teams of Communist Party agitators forced peasants to relinquish their land, personal property, and sometimes housing to collective farms, and they deported so-called kulaks—wealthier peasants—as well as any peasants who resisted collectivization altogether. Collectivization led to a drop in production, the disorganization of the rural economy, and food shortages. It also sparked a series of peasant rebellions, including armed uprisings, in some parts of Ukraine. Farms, villages, and whole towns in Ukraine were placed on blacklists and prevented from receiving food. Peasants were forbidden to leave the Ukrainian republic in search of food. Despite growing starvation, food requisitions were increased and aid was not provided in sufficient quantities. The crisis reached its peak in the winter of 1932–33, when organized groups of police and communist apparatchiks ransacked the homes of peasants and took everything edible, from crops to personal food supplies to pets. Hunger and fear drove these actions, but they were reinforced by more than a decade of hateful and conspiratorial rhetoric emanating from the highest levels of the Kremlin. The famine was accompanied by a broader assault on Ukrainian identity. While peasants were dying by the millions, agents of the Soviet secret police were targeting the Ukrainian political establishment and intelligentsia. The famine provided cover for a campaign of repression and persecution that was carried out against Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian religious leaders. The official policy of Ukrainization, which had encouraged the use of the Ukrainian language, was effectively halted. Moreover, anyone connected to the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic—an independent government that had been declared in June 1917 in the wake of the February Revolution but was dismantled after the Bolsheviks conquered Ukrainian territory—was subjected to vicious reprisals. All those targeted by this campaign were liable to be publicly vilified, jailed, sent to the Gulag (a system of Soviet prisons and forced-labour camps), or executed. Knowing that this Russification program would inevitably reach him, Mykola Skrypnyk, one of the best-known leaders of the Ukrainian Communist Party, committed suicide rather than submit to one of Stalin’s show trials. Because the famine was so deadly, and because it was officially denied by the Kremlin for more than half a century, it has played a large role in Ukrainian public memory, particularly since independence. Ukrainian poet Ivan Drach was the first to speak publicly about the famine, in 1986, after the Chernobyl disaster, citing it as an example of how damaging official silence can be. Monuments commemorating the Holodomor have been erected by the Ukrainian government as well as by the Ukrainian diaspora, and Holodomor Remembrance Day is observed around the world on the fourth Saturday of November. Ukraine has also invested in research on the famine.
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