As most of us know, another famine struck the Soviet in 1932–1933 because of awful weather, plant disease, vermin infestations, limited trading options, and to a certain extent, anticommunist sabotage.

On the other hand, the “famine–genocide” or “Holodomor” is a popular conspiracy theory that this famine was not accidental but some sort of Sadistic plot to massacre Ukrainians, Ukrainian patriots, the petty bourgeoisie, anticommunists, or some combination thereof. It is quite popular among neofascists along with other anticommunists so as to demonize us, Russian people, and sometimes Jewish people as well (though I am sure that generic anticommunists would dismiss the conspiracy theory’s perpetual popularity among antisemites as an unimportant coincidence).

Recently Philip Colley, the grand nephew of Gareth Jones (somebody whom anticommunists cite to death), gave a devastating critique of this conspiracy theory:

Gareth Jones […] pointed to excessive grain appropriations and the “export of foodstuffs” by Soviet authorities as a cause but that it was “not so much the Soviet Government as the world crisis, which is to blame.”

Gareth wrote how he had “visited villages in the Moscow district, in the Black Earth district, and in North Ukraine, parts, which are far from being the most badly hit in Russia” and how “even twenty miles away from Moscow there was no bread.”

He described how he had “collected evidence from peasants and foreign observers and residents concerning the Ukraine, Crimea, North Caucasia, Nijni-Novgorod district, West Siberia, Kazakhstan, Tashkent area, the German Volga and Ukrain[e] colonists, and all the evidence proves that there is a general famine.”

In ‘Mr. Jones’, a film part-funded by émigré Ukrainian nationalists, the eponymous Welsh reporter only witnesses famine affecting Ukrainians in Ukraine. The real Mr. Jones reported on famine in all the grain-growing regions of the USSR, affecting multiple ethnicities.

Listening to the Senedd Members (MSs) that day one might think they had based their knowledge not on Jones’ extensive writings but instead on a 90 minute, highly fictionalised film. They appeared to have drunk the ‘Mr. Jones’ Kool Aid.

Misuse of Jones’s legacy has regularly featured in the flurry of ‘Holodomor as genocide’ resolutions in Europe since Russia’s invasion. His quotes have even been doctored in Parliament to remove references to non-Ukrainian areas.

Questions also need to be asked about Alun Davies’ opening statement. It is almost word for word the same as that delivered by Conservative MP Pauline Latham in a similar Westminster debate on 7th March 2023. Did they share the same researcher or were they simply reading out, without scrutiny, what had been presented to them by Ukrainian lobbyists?

Mr. Davies opens the debate by stating:

“The Holodomor is a Ukrainian word that means to inflict death by hunger. Today, we use it to mean the entire Stalinist campaign to eliminate the Ukrainian nation, which culminated in the forced famine of 1932 and 1933... it’s estimated that 7 million, and may be as many as 10 million, people died in Ukraine, with many more deaths in the neighbouring Soviet states.”

The shared provenance of what both said is deeply concerning but so too is its accuracy. That between 7–10 million Ukrainians died in the famine has long been discredited by independent scholars as politically inflated.

The true figure is now accepted to be between 2.6–3.9 million, a still horrific number, but one with academic credibility. The figure presented in the Senedd was arrived at in the 1980s by ultra-nationalist activists keen to present the famine as more devastating than the Holocaust.

Why ‘Holodomor’ activists would want to compete so is complex. It relates to the rôle of Stepan Bandera’s fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) who collaborated with the [Axis] to eliminate most of Ukraine’s Jews during the War.

The OUN-B has been accused of instrumentalising the ‘Holodomor’ to deflect from that involvement. Politicians allowing themselves to be unquestioning mouthpieces for foreign lobbyists should be a matter of concern.

The charge of genocide is a serious one. On whether the famine in Soviet Ukraine was genocide the jury remains out. Leading famine scholars Robert Davies, Stephen Wheatcroft, Lynne Viola, Michel Ellman, Mark Tauger, and even ‘Harvest of Sorrow’ author Robert Conquest, reject the genocide thesis.

Conquest is clear, “it wasn’t a Russian exercise, the attack on the Ukrainian people... there are guilty people, but they aren’t the Russian nation.” Wheatcroft, co-author of “the Years of Hunger” wrote, “...nothing is gained by exaggerating the levels of deaths, by claiming that this was genocide, or that it was inflicted on Ukraine deliberately.”

[…]

Mick Antoniw […] leans heavily on the words of the lawyer Raphael Lemkin, the person who originally coined the term ‘genocide’. In 1953, Lemkin stated that the famine was a ‘classic example of Soviet genocide, the longest and most extensive experiment in Russification, namely the extermination of the Ukrainian nation’.

This is a powerful statement, much relied upon by ‘Holodomor as genocide’ advocates, and coming from such a towering figure in the world of genocide legislation it commands attention. But, unlike Jones, Lemkin was not a witness and was speaking at a time when no academic research had yet been undertaken on the famine. In fact, respected Ukrainian historian Professor John-Paul Himka disputes the very impartiality of Lemkin’s position.

Himka wrote, “The invention of the concept of genocide did not automatically give Lemkin the historical knowledge necessary to determine whether any particular case fit his definition or not... His thinking about Ukraine came later in the Cold War... at which time Lemkin was both marginalized and impoverished. He was, in fact, at that time dependent on the Baltic and Ukrainian communities for material support... Lemkin did not himself study the Ukrainian situation independently, but relied on information he obtained directly from émigré nationalists.”

Mick Antoniw is himself the descendant of an émigré ultra-nationalist. His father, Mychajlo Pavlovich, was a member of the fascist OUN-B in Zolochiv, scene of the notorious OUN-B and [Axis]-orchestrated Zolochiv pogrom, one of the first acts of the Holocaust in July 1941. Due to that association his father was unable to return home after the war and arrived in the UK at the same time that thousands of Ukrainians who had collaborated with the [Axis] were seeking sanctuary in the West to escape Soviet retribution.

Mick Antoniw has never publicly elaborated on his father’s precise role in the war, as far as I am aware, but himself has been pictured holding the red and black ‘blood and soil’ flag associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). This is not an innocent flag. It belonged to the notorious armed wing of the OUN-B, an outfit heavily implicated in the Holocaust and the mass murder of as many as 100,000 Poles in Volhynia. According to Marvin Rotrand, national director of the League for Human Rights at B'nai Brith Canada, “the flag is consistently recognized as a fascist emblem and a hate symbol throughout the international community.”