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The Hoax of the 1932-33 UkraineFamine

Originally published in Challenge-Desafio, newspaper of the

Progressive Labor Party, February 25, 1987, pp. 11, 13-14.On September 24, 1986, a documentary film, "Harvest of Despair,"was telecast nationwide over Public Broadcasting System stations This 55-minute film claimed that in 1931-32 ten million Ukrainianswere deliberately starved to death by Joseph Stalin and theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union. To convince viewers that the film was accurate, a 45-minute paneldiscussion followed the film. Robert Conquest, one of the panelists,had just published a 400-page book, Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror- Famine. This film is a fraud. This essay will show that it uses lies, misleadingfilm, and Nazi collaborators, to attack Stalin, the Soviet Union, andthe whole idea of communism, while promoting nationalism andfascism.

Why Should We Care?

Why should we care about this? Because any attack on the then-socialist Soviet Union is an attack upon all workers today. Capitalistswere horrified by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. For the first timein human history common working people -- under the leadership of a

communist party -- proved they could overthrow their exploiters andrun a country far better without them. This event still electrifies theworld.Capitalists will do anything to tell workers and other people that thiswas wrong. Their main way of discouraging workers from fighting forcommunism is by attacking the ten- socialist USSR under Stalin.

Background

When the Bolsheviks (Russian communists) led the workers to seizepower in October 1917, they took the land from large landowners andgave it to the peasants. by the end of the 1920s the Bolshevikswanted the peasants to pool their land and equipment into collectivefarms. Greater efficiency would permit the government to collectmore taxes, which could finance the industrialization of the ten-backward USSR. In order to do this, the Bolsheviks tried to win thepoor and middle peasants to oppose the rich peasants, whom theythought would be the main obstacles to putting their property intocollectives. Although many poor and middle peasants did supportcollectivization, most were either passive or hostile. Tens of thousands of committed workers were recruited in the cities and used

force against those peasants who were unwilling to join thecollectives.

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According to the film, during 1932-33 millions of peasants in theUkraine were deliberately started to death. This was supposedly done(1) to break the back of resistance to forced collectivization; and (2)to suppress Ukrainian nationalism by destroying the heart of theUkrainian "nation," the peasant villages. The film claims soldiers and

armed workers took most of the grain not only from those peasantswho resisted collectivization, but also from those who were alreadyon collective farms, leaving them to starve.Both film and book were funded by Ukrainian nationalistorganizations in the US and Canada. both strongly promote the ideaof Ukrainian nationhood and attack communism. They repeatedly callthe famine a "holocaust" and "genocide," and explicitly compare it tothe German Nazis' massacre of six million Jews during WWII.

Nationalism Leads to Fascism

After the Russian Civil War (1918-21) which followed the Revolution,the leading Ukrainian nationalists fled to Western Europe, and turnedto supporting Hitler. Entering the Soviet Union with the Nazi invasionin 1941, they engaged in hair-raising atrocities. The main group, theOUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) "adopted ... aprogramme palatable to the Nazis" and "prepared to engage inpropaganda, intelligence, and, if necessary, sabotage through theirfollowers in Canada, the United States, and Britain." Althoughclaiming to speak for the Ukrainian people, they met initially withlittle popular support in the Soviet Union.1 

In WWII, as during the Civil War, the Ukrainian nationalists werepetty-bourgeois intellectuals, "unable to penetrate the mass of thepopulation to any great extent." As a result, they relied heavily ontheir bosses, the Nazis: "The theory and teachings of the Nationalistswere very close to Fascism, and in some respects, such as theinsistence on `racial purity,' even went beyond the original fascistdoctrines." 2 At least two of the persons who appear in the film are Nazicollaborators. Ivan Majstrenko, identified as a former Soviet journalist,is named by Armstrong as a founder of a nationalists émigré party inGerman in 1947. Metropolitan Mstyslav, head of the UkrainianOrthodox Church in the USA, is identified as "a deputy in the PolishParliament in 1932-33." Armstrong reveals he was a layman, that is,not a member of the clergy, who was made archbishop by the Nazisduring the Nazi invasion, and who was "the most active nationalistamong the Autocephalous (Ukrainian Orthodox) bishops." 3 

An `Award-Winning' Film

Much is made of the fact that "Harvest of Despair" was awarded thegold medal in the TV Documentaries category and the Grand Award

 Trophy Bowl for "most outstanding entry" at the 28th International

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Film and TB Festival of New York in November 1985. Soundsimpressive, right? Here's how a film magazine describes this festival:"International Film and TV Festival of New York . Notoriously known asa pay-through-the-nose-for-a-snatch-of- the-big-time festival, it hasbeen denigrated [criticized] over the years in this column for its policy

of giving out specious [good-looking but meaningless] official plaquesto all entries regardless of quality of the work." 4 A Canadian newspaper says this of Yurij Luhovy, the film's producerand editor: "The 34-year-old film-maker... admits most of his incomehas come from editing feature films of questionable quality. He has areputation as a good `doctor' -- someone who's brought in to salvagea movie which is deemed unreleasable by film exhibitors anddistributors." 5 Why would the makers of the film give it to an editor whose specialtyis `saving" bad films, and then submit it to a "festival" that is thelaughing-stock of the film industry? Because the film is a piece of dishonest, anti-Communist propaganda, as we will see.

Phony Film and Photographs

"The hour-long film ... depends heavily on still photographs of emaciated children and bodies being carted away to recreate theconditions in Ukraine in 1932.""There can be no question that without the films and photographsuncovered from the 1932-33 famine, the film would lose much of itsauthority." 6 

In 1935, a certain "Thomas Walker" published a five-part story on thefamine in the chain of newspapers owned by the fanatical anti-Communist and pro-fascist tycoon William Randolph Hearst.Accompanying the series were photographs, supposedly of starvingUkrainian peasants, which Walker claimed he had taken personally. InMarch 1935, Louis Fischer, then a pro-Soviet reporter for The Nation,expressed some doubts about "Walker's" photos: "Mr Walker'sphotographs could easily date back to the Volga famine in 1921.many of them might have been taken outside the Soviet Union. Theywere taken at different seasons of the year ... One picture includestrees or shrubs with large leaves. Such leaves could not have grownby the `late spring' of Mr. Walker's alleged visit. Other photographsshow winter and early fall backgrounds. Here is the Journal [Hearst'sNew York City newspaper] of the twenty-seventh. a starving, bloatedboy of fifteen calmly poses naked for Mr. Walker. The next minute, inthe same village, Mr. Walker photographs a man who is obviouslysuffering from the cold despite his thick sheepskin overcoat. Theweather that spring must have been as unreliable as Mr. Walker toallow nude poses one moment and require furs the next."7  The famine stories ran in the Hearst press in February, 1935.Fischer's rejection of them appear early in march. By July, "Thomas

Walker" was in a New York City jail, under arrest as Robert Green, anescaped convict from Colorado, where he was returned to serve out

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his sentence. Green admitted his photos were frauds, not taken in theUkraine nor by himself. This was reported in all the New York Citynewspapers. The Daily Worker , paper of the then- revolutionaryCommunist Party USA, ran two detailed series about "Walker"/Greenand some other phony accounts of the famine from July-20, 1935.

On November 17, 1986, Douglas Tottle, a Canadian researcher,exposed the sources of some of the fraudulent photos at a SchoolBoard meeting in Toronto, where Ukrainian nationalists and otheranti-communists were trying to get the film and a course based uponit into the Toronto high school curriculum.Stunned by Tottle's dramatic presentation, and in the presence of reporters from all the Toronto newspapers, Ukrainian nationalistprofessors began to run for cover. One of them, Orest Subtelny,admitted the still shots were from the 1921-22 famine but justifiedtheir use by saying the film lacked "impact" without them. "`You haveto have visual impact. You want to show what people dying from afamine look like. Starving children are starving children,' saidSubtelny. He offered no apologies for the deliberate attempt tomislead."Another nationalist who had done research for the film is MarcoCarynnyk. an article of his appeared in the November 1983 issue of Commentary , a US neo-conservative Zionist monthly, in whichCarynnyk bitterly attacked Louis Fischer and Walter Duranty (NewYork Times Soviet correspondent during the `30s) for "covering up"the famine. but Tottle's revelations forced Carynnyk to admit he'dbeen a party to the real cover-up. According to the Toronto Star of 

November 20:"Researcher Marco Carynnyk, who says he originated the idea of thefilm, says his concerns about questionable photographs were ignored.Carynnyk said that none of the archival film footage used in themovie is of the Ukrainian famine and that `very few photos from `32-33' appear that can be traced as authentic.A dramatic shot at the film's end of an emaciated girl, which has alsobeen used in the film's promotional material, is not from the 1932-33famine, Carynnyk said.`I made the point that this sort of inaccuracy cannot be allowed,' hesaid in an interview. `I was ignored.'"

Carynnyk is suing the St. Vladimir's Institute, the nationalist sponsorsof the film, for breach of contract and for copyright infringements.Rumor has it that the filmmakers doctored or distorted some of theinterviews which Carynnyk made for the film.Carynnyk's complaints at the November 17 Toronto Board of Edmeeting are dishonest, of course. The film has been out for threeyears. Yet Carynnyk never made public his "reservations" about thefilm's dishonesty until Tottle publicly exposed it. Neither did any of hiscronies, with whom he has now apparently fallen out. The Ukrainian nationalists' admissions clearly prove their intent to

deceive. perhaps a few of the still photos of starving people cannotbe traced to any source. So what? The nationalists now admit they

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knew that many others which they used were fraudulent, and that --we may take Carynnyk's word for it -- none of the film footage usedis of the famine. This has been suggested before. Uniforms and other datablecharacteristics have suggested to Soviet experts that most - -perhaps

even all -- of the footage shown while the narrator is discussing thefamine is in fact not of the Ukraine during the `30s, but of the CivilWar period (1918-21), or even from W.W.I (1914-18).Even one of the panelists, Harrison Salisbury, refers to the fact: "itdoesn't really disturb me that - I am certain from my familiarity with alot of documentaries -- that it's a mishmash of all kinds of things puttogether. It may not be specifically accurate that each one of thesehorrible corpses actually was in the Ukraine or was in some otherplace, but in general, there were people exactly like that." 8 Salisburystresses that he sees nothing wrong with this kind of deception,showing this "honest" anti-Communist's essential similarity to theUkrainian nationalists. Anti-communism has a certain logic to it: italways ends up as fascism.Researcher Tottle is publishing a book on the fraudulent scholarshipsurrounding the "Ukrainian famine" story. It is scheduled to appearwithin the next six months.

Nationalist `Scholars' and the Intent to Deceive

In a 1984 discussion, James Mace revealed there were two mainsources of photos: "Walker's," and the German edition of a book by

Ewald Ammende, an Austrian relief worker, published in 1935.Several statements here and in another article of Mace's publishedthat year prove Mace knew that some of the photos were of suspicious origin.First, Mace makes no mention of any film footage, which he certainlywould have it he had known of any. 9 Second, Mace knew there wassomething wrong with the "Walker" and Ammende photos. He stated:"...he [Dalrymple, another anti- Communist] -- like Ewald Ammendebefore him -- was taken in by accounts in the Hearst press in 1935,which were updated to indicate that the famine continued into 1934,whereas any of the numerous eyewitnesses who came to the Westafter World War II would have told him that the famine actually endedin 1933. 10 How could a man who had supposedly traveled to thecountryside and personally taken pictures of starving peasants havepostdated his account by a whole year? Third, Mace knew the "Walker" and Ammende accounts. In the 1984pamphlet Mace makes this revelation about Ammende's book: "TheEnglish translation, Human Life in Russia, took some photographsfrom the Walker account and omitted some that appeared in theGerman edition, which was published in Vienna in 1935." 11 In fact,the English edition of Ammende's book states that the photos of 

starving people -- the same ones "Walker" claimed he had takenhimself -- were the work of a "Dr. F. Dittloff, for many years director

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of the German Government Agricultural Concession (Drusag) in theNorth Caucasus.""The photographs were taken by Dr. Dittloff himself in the summer of 1933, and they demonstrate the conditions then prevailing on theplains of the agricultural areas of the Hunger Zone. A few of them

have been published before elsewhere without his permission. Dr.Dittloff accepts full responsibility for the guarantee of their authenticity (emphasis added)." 12 Both Mace and Conquest were obviously aware of the seriousquestions as to whether the photos are genuine, since they refer toboth Ammende's book and Walker's articles, which contradict eachother. They also refer to a book by James Crowl on the journalism of the 1930s, which outlines Louis Fischer's views. Neither Mace norConquest reveal any of these matters to their audience.Mace has worked for years with Ukrainian nationalist committees. Hewrote introductions both for Ammende's book (reissued in 1984) andfor Alexa Woropay's nationalist tract, The Ninth Circle, both of whichgive contradictory sources for some of the still photos. Anyone whokept the "Walker" clips from 1935 would have also known of "Walker"'s disgrace the same year. Clearly Mace knew of this, andwas a party to the fraud from the beginning.

Conclusion

"Where there's smoke, there's fire." No one has to lie about the truth. The anti-Communist, pro-fascist story about the "great famine" is

nonsense. Anti-Communist groups are beginning to show this film,and other TV stations will carry it. They should be picketed forpromoting fascist, anti-worker lies and, where possible, stopped.(Future articles will deal with the book, Harvest of Sorrow; thedishonest use of sources; what really happened; and where theworking-class-led Soviet Union went wrong (including not building acommunist base with the peasants) and reverted to the capitalist dictatorship it is today) 

Notes

1 Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia 1941-1945, 2nd edition(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981), pp.114; 115, n.3 122. Back 2 Armstrong, pp. 238; 280; 289.Back 3 Armstrong, pp. 201, 205. Back 4 The Independent (New York Association of Independent Video andFilmmakers), July/August 1985, p. 68.Back 5 Leonard Klady, "Famine film eye- opener,"Winnipeg Free Press,October 26, 1984, p. 24. Back 6 Toronto Globe and Mail, Nov. 18 1986; Klady (see note 5).Back 7 Louis Fischer, "Hearst's Russian `Famine',"The Nation, March 13,

1935, p. 296.Back 8 Transcript of film, p. 23Back 

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9 The Man-Made Famine in Ukraine. Robert Conquest, DanaDalrymple, James Mace, Michael Novak (Washington, DC: AmericanEnterprise Institute, 1984), pp. 24-5.Back 10 James Mace, Problems of Communism [published by the UnitedStates Department of State], March-April 1985, p. 137.Back 

11. The Man-Made Famine (see note 9), p. 25.Back 12. Ewald Ammende, Human Life In Russia (London: George Allen &Unwin, 1936), p. 23; emphasis added.Back In Search of a SOVIET HOLOCAUST: A 55-Year-Old Famine Feeds theRight by Jeff Coplon, Originally published in the Village Voice (NewYork City), January 12, 1988.Forward to the next article of this six-part series.