ore:

Review

Untying a twisted history

FRAUD, FAMINE AND FASCISM: THE
UKRAINIAN GENOCIDE MYTH FROM
HITLER TO HARVARD. By Douglas Tot-
tle. Progress Books, 1987. 167 pages with

bibliography. Available at People’s Co-op

Books.

What caused the disastrous Ukraine fam-
ine of 1932-1933?

In Fraud, Famine Fascism, Douglas Tot-
tle writes: ‘(In the early 1930s) the

Soviets charted a course that had no prece- ~

dents in world history: the building of a
socialist society. They sought to transforma
backward land plagued by poverty and illi-
teracy into an industrialized country with a
modern agricultural sector,”

They began the mass collectivization of
agriculture and launched a program of
rapid industrialization which greatly strained
the resources of the new socialist state, then
still recovering from civil war and foreign
military intervention.

“As part of the collectivization program,
the land of the kulaks (large landowners)
was to be confiscated and transferred to the
collective farms, as was their cattle, machin-
ery and other farm property. A sizeable
number of wealthier kulak families were to
be evicted from collectivized areas and sent
elsewhere.

“The kulaks responded — fighting
against collectivization with an organized
campaign of large-scale destruction.” They
were joined by many other peasants who
were wrongly treated as kulaks or who suf-
fered from arbitrary emergency measures.
“The struggle swept through the country-
side, approaching civil war in many areas,
with devastating results particularly in
Ukraine.”

Tottle concludes: “Drought (a complicat-
ing factor), widespread sabotage, amatéur-
ish Soviet planning, Stalinist excesses and
mistakes caused the famine of 1932-1933.”

Tottle’s main purpose is to show how the
enemies of socialism have portrayed this
famine, not as the outcome of a bitter class
struggle, but as a consciously planned cam-

paign of genocide against the Ukrainian .

people. This famine genocide theory made
its most recent appearance in 1986 with the
film “Harvest of Despair” and Robert
Conquest’s book “Harvest of Sorrow”.

Tottle traces the history of the genocide
theory from its beginnings in the Nazi and
pro-fascist press of the 1930s. Since then, he
says, the same bogus material has been con-
stantly recycled in an ongoing propaganda
war against the Soviet Union and socialism.

In 1935, the Hearst press in the United
States published several articles, alleging
deliberate genocide, by convicted forger
Robert Green, writing under the alias
Thomas Walker. After Walker was un-
masked in court, Hearst employed other
writers who were in their turn also discre-
dited. But, says Tottle, the present day
advocates of the genocide theory still use
these sham articles to gain “‘a certain super-
ficial credibility.

“What was recognized in the 30s as
politically-motivated sensationalism has
been transformed in the 1980s into primary
evidence. Examples of fraud and contradic-
tions exposed at the time are conveniently
forgotten. The notorious right-wing charac-
ter of the Hearst press is rarely remem-
bered.”

Tottle also traces the photographs — still
used today to support the genocide
theory — to the same fascist sources, and

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30 e Pacific Tribune, April 27, 1988

finds that many of them date from an earlier
famine in the Soviet Union in 1921-1922,
during the periéd of civil war and foreign
intervention.

During the Cold War which followed the
defeat of fascism in 1945, Ukrainian
Nationalist exiles produced several books
on the famine, again alleging deliberate
genocide. In these books, says Tottle, they
have even blamed the Soviets for massacres
of Jews which were actually committed by
Ukrainian Nationalist forces.

Throughout his book, Tottle restricts the
use of the term “Ukrainian Nationalist” to
“the right-wing and fascist minority in the
Ukrainian community.” He thanks those
Ukrainians of the post-war immigration
“who had the courage to offer or verify
information about the presence of former
Nazi war criminals and collaborators pres-
ently hiding behind the good name of the
Ukrainian Canadian community.”

Tottle takes a close look at those who
collaborated in the Nazi occupation of the
Ukraine and who have since tried to absolve
themselves of blame. When they incite res-
entment against the Soviet Union, says Tot-
tle, they play an important role in the new
Cold War initiated by the Reagan adminis-
tration.

As an example, he details the activities of
one collaborator who is now a Canadian
citizen: “Hay-Holowko did not fight
against the Nazi slavery which murdered
millions of Ukrainians for whom he now
pretends to speak. On the contrary, he
served the ‘New Order’ in a number of
capacities. He continues to serve, as an
exponent of the famine-genocide cam-
paign.” ;

The lessons of the Soviet collectivization
of agriculture and the famine of 1932-1933
remain vital today when peasant peoples
the world over are struggling to free them-
selves from the grip of private property and
to build socialism.

Many of the problems which the Soviets
faced in the 1930s were later faced by the
peoples of China, Vietnam, Cuba and other
countries, where immense efforts were
again required to transform the social basis
of production and the ownership of land.

In Nicaragua and many other countries,
land reform is today a major source of class
struggles, and right-wing violence which

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threatens the recently won political powet
of peasants and workers.

Revolutionaries in these countries have
learned from the failures and successes of
their predecessors that socialism can
built only with a clear understanding of the
class forces unleashed by the struggle for
land reform. To this end, the writing ©
history is much more than an academic
question.

Truth may indeed be the Daughter of
Time, but she rarely comes into her righ
inheritance without a long and bitter sttus
gle against false claimants. In Fraud, Fam-
ine and Fascism, Douglas Tottle makes an
honest and valuable contribution to One
particularly important debate.

— Glenn Bullard

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