Hansard

I, too, congratulate Marco Biagi on his new job and on securing this important debate, and I thank Kenny Gibson for standing in for him so well.

The vast famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933, which is known as the Holodomor, is a very sensitive and sobering issue. This past Sunday, Ukraine remembered those who died during that dark chapter in Ukrainian history 81 years ago.

The event would probably have been hidden away in a dusty corner of the vast archives of the Soviet empire had it not been for Gareth Jones, a brave Welshman. He was a journalist and an adviser to David Lloyd George who travelled to the Ukraine when whispers of a horrendous famine started to emerge. He defied the authorities, which did not allow any journalists in the region, and ventured into what he described as

“once the richest farmland in Russia”,

which had become a desert.

The sight that met him was indeed gruesome. Corpses were lying in the streets and people were so starved that they could not be recognised as human beings. The country was enmeshed in deep despair. He exposed that to the world and was consequently banned from returning by the Soviet Union, which branded him a liar. His life came to a brutal end when he was murdered in the far east a few years later. As the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom once described him, he is an “unsung hero of Ukraine”.

Famine was not rare in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s as a result of policies that were inherently doomed to fail with disastrous consequences. The Holodomor in particular was a tragedy, as the Soviet Government did not allow any western aid nor any policies that would have helped to relieve the situation. That was contrary to the previous approach that was adopted to famines in Russia. Unfortunately, many people back then and today have seen that approach as a way to physically weaken the concept of Ukrainian nationality.

Last year, the Euromaidan protests started and the Ukrainian nation rose to show its will for freedom and the desire to shake off Russia’s dominance, and to prove its ability to chart its own course. Thousands of people have died in Ukraine this year, and its borders have been violated as Crimea was illegally annexed. Eastern regions were almost destroyed and lost their remaining economic viability, and people of the Donbas are left without water, electricity and food.

That is not a new Holodomor and is not equal to it, but it is paramount that we continue to act with a sense of urgency. A message of unanimity against the Russian actions and unity with the Ukrainians was sent at the G20 summit; that summit is now over but, unfortunately, the war in Ukraine is not.

Between 3 million and 7 million Ukrainians died during the famine. Many were Ukrainian country people—women and children. They were told to hand over their land in favour of collective farms as part of Stalin’s communist totalitarian utopia, but they refused to comply. The people were asked to abandon their church in favour of atheism and they resisted. Hard-working Ukrainian farmers wanted a chance at prosperity and were told that they had to give up everything that they had. They resisted, but they faced a horrible destiny: a long, drawn-out death by starvation.

We should also not forget Ukraine’s kurkuls—known as kulaks in the other parts of the Soviet Union—who were the relatively affluent farmer class whom Stalin declared he wanted to eliminate. The overwhelming majority of them were executed, sent to gulag camps or imprisoned. Many historians believe that removal of those experienced land managers made the famine even worse. There were centralised policies—for example, people were told from the centre to make hay when it was raining. Things were as bad as that.

We should never allow the world to forget the atrocities that were committed by the communist regime of the Soviet Union, and they should never be allowed to happen again.