The terrible famine

“To pray for the genocide that took the lives of almost 6 million people”: this was the plea that the Metropolitan archbishop of Ukraine’s Catholic Church Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki addressed to the faithful on November 22 on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, the horrible famine that in the years 1932-1933, under Communist rule, caused the death of millions in Ukraine and across the Soviet Union. Also the Pope, at the end of the Angelus prayer of Sunday November 23rd, recalled the memory of the tragic event. Pavlo Vyshkovkyy, SIR Europe correspondent from Ukraine, retraced the salient points. On the invitation of the dignitaries of the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Churches, on November 22 the faithful throughout the Country prayed for the victims of the Holodomor. President Yuschenco, along with the Orthodox patriarchs Bartholomew I of Constantinople and Alexis II in Moscow, exhorted the international community to recall this tragic event. To this regard, Ukrainian youth founded the ecumenical movement “Communion” that brings together the faithful of different religions. The movement is centered on prayer with a view of soliciting public awareness over this tragedy that involved strife between Bolsheviks and the farmers in two separate phases: in the years 1918-1922, and in 1928-1933. In those circumstances, thousands were shot to death or died for famine, while financial aid and letters from the Vatican underwent rigid governmental scrutiny. However, the Vatican couldn’t accept to be censored nor could it tolerate bishops’ appointment by the Soviet government and that priests were prevented from teaching spiritual and religious education to the youth. In the years 1928-29, a high number of Catholic priests were arrested, they were forced to confess that they were spies. Many Catholic priests of Latin rite were charged with being “public enemies” and tortured, stripped of their properties and deported with their relatives in distant regions of the Country. Between 1930 and 1931 the USSR deported to Siberia 381thousand families, 64 thousand of which were Ukrainian, amounting to 1,800 people. The authorities tried to close the churches, triggering the upheaval of the farmers. This in turn led to attacks against churches, monasteries, sanctuaries and religious communities, considered “the Kulaki’s stronghold”. The Church also represented the major point of reference of the masses of peasants that at the end of the 1930s were 80% of the overall population. The closure of churches and the arrests of the priests marked a decisive step in the destruction of the rural world. These events were especially fierce from November 1932 and June 1933, constituting a real and true catastrophe. According to reliable estimates, some 10 million perished in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and in Northern Caucasus, but also in Russian regions like the Low Volga. In that period, cases of cannibalism were also reported. The Italian consul of Harkov, one of the cities that was most-severely hit by the famine, declared that not only the peasants who were on the brink of survival poured into the city, also children were brought there and abandoned by their own parents in the hope that someone would take care of them. In spring 1933, the death rate in the country areas reached its peak, due to an outburst of typhoid. Only a few dozen people survived in villages with thousands of inhabitants. The Catholics who didn’t enter the kolchoz were left to die of hunger or disease as recalled by D. Kwasniuk from the village Pidlisnyj Mukariv: “Nobody came to visit us nor entered our home where five children were starving to death. Two of them died under our very eyes. They abandoned us in those bare walls and thanks God we still had a roof above our heads and some sacks of hay for the horse. It was a miracle that they didn’t see the horse since it was hidden and we were able to eat it. In December my sister caught meningitis. In a desperate attempt to save her, my father asked doctors’ help, but since we had no money they refused to cure her. She died January 28. My father got up and went to the kolkhoz to ask for the horses to bring the coffin to the city and hold the funeral in the cemetery, since there were none in our village. After the funeral, my father fell seriously ill and March 16 of the same year he died”. The Holy See granted meals in canteens for the population. In those cities where there were none, the Holy See sent thousands of bags with food, while clothes were handed out to all those in need, regardless of their age, race, or religion. This took place in spite of the government’s harsh persecutions against the Catholic Church. It’s also possible that in the first aftermath there were negotiations on the position of the Church in the Soviet state, but without concrete results.