Holodomor in modern politics

[7] Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has run campaigns and lobbied the United Nations and the Council of Europe to recognise the Holodomor as a genocide internationally.

[a] Countries to have signed declarations for the United Nations on the Holodomor[e][f][56] include Albania,[g] Argentina,[58][59][60] Australia,[61][62][63][g] Austria,[g] Azerbaijan,[g] Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada,[64][65] Chile, Colombia,[66][67] Czechia,[68] Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador,[69][70] Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Paraguay, Peru, Poland,[71][72] Portugal, Slovakia,[73][74] Spain, Ukraine, and the United States.

[85] In a ruling of 13 January 2010, Kyiv's court of appeal recognized "the leaders of the totalitarian Bolshevik regime as those guilty of 'genocide against the Ukrainian national group in 1932–33 through the artificial creation of living conditions intended for its partial physical destruction.

'"[86] The court dropped criminal proceedings against leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Stanislav Kosior, Pavel Postyshev, Vlas Chubar, and others who all had died years before.

With the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons, the government of Canada has declared that the fourth Saturday in November be known the Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor) Memorial Day.

[88] The Senate unanimously adopted a motion on the recognition of the Holodomor as a "Famine-Genocide" in 2003,[65] for Canada "to condemn any attempt to deny or distort this historical truth as anything less than a genocide",[h] and called for a day of remembrance for "those that perished during the time of the Ukrainian Famine Genocide" to be commemorated on the fourth Saturday of November,[i] and for historians, educators, and parliamentarians "to include the true facts of the Ukrainian Famine/Genocide of 1932–33 in the records of Canada and in future educational materials".

[92] A statue titled "Bitter Memories of Childhood" was installed in the park grounds surrounding the Saskatchewan Legislative Building in 2015 to remember the victims of the Holodomor.

"[k][94] At the international conference of the Ukrainian Holodomor, which was held in October 2003 at the Institute of Social and Religious History of Vicenza, 28 conference participants that included historians James Mace, Hubert Laszkiewicz, Andrea Graziosi, Yuriy Shapoval, Gerhard Simon, Orest Subtelny, and Mauro Martini endorsed a resolution addressed to the Italian government and the European Parliament with a request to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.

Its victims were millions of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country.

"[100] Ukrainian mass media censured Evgeny Guzeev, the Consul-General of the Russian Federation in Lviv, who stated that "the leaders of the period were sensible people, and it is impossible to imagine that this was planned.

"[102] On 17 November 2007, members from Aleksandr Dugin's Russian nationalist group the Eurasian Youth Union broke into the Ukrainian cultural center in Moscow and smashed an exhibition on the famine.

But if the Kremlin really believed in this argument, it would officially acknowledge that Stalin's actions constituted mass genocide against all the people of the Soviet Union.

The resolution reads that the Senate "recognizes the findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine as submitted to Congress on April 22, 1988, including that ... 'Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932–1933.'"

The conference concluded that political considerations regarding the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union played a role in not publicly sharing the information.

The conference also found that leading American journalists working in the Soviet Union knowingly distorted or omitted information about the famine.

[122][123][124] The preamble stated:[125] In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women and children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime.

Honouring the seventieth anniversary of the Ukrainian tragedy, we also commemorate the memory of millions of Russians, Kazakhs and representatives of other nationalities who died of starvation in the Volga River region, Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan and in other parts of the former Soviet Union, as a result of civil war and forced collectivisation, leaving deep scars in the consciousness of future generations.Valeriy P. Kuchinsky, the chief Ukrainian representative, said that the declaration that the Holodomor was a result of the totalitarian politics of the Soviet regime was a compromise between the position of the Ukrainian government to recognize the Holodomor as genocide, and the positions of the British, Russian, and United States governments to not.

[126] Many states signed one or more declarations presented in plenary sessions: At the 2007 General Conference of the UNESCO, 193 member delegations unanimously passed a resolution "On Remembrance of Victims of the Great Famine (Holodomor) in Ukraine".

[138][137] On 3 July 2008, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe passed the resolution condemning the Ukrainian famine acknowledging the direct responsibility of the Soviet action.

The resolution called upon all parliaments to take measures on recognition of the fact of Holodomor in Ukraine but fell short of recognizing it as an act of genocide as requested by the document prepared by the Ukrainian delegation.

The resolution included the following statements:[141][142] Whereas the Holodomor famine of 1932–1933, which caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians, was cynically and cruelly planned by Stalin's regime in order to force through the Soviet Union's policy of collectivisation of agriculture against the will of the rural population in Ukraine.

Section 11: It strongly condemns the cruel policies pursued by the Stalinist regime, which resulted in the death of millions of innocent people, as a crime against humanity.