Holodomor denial

This article is about historical negationism regarding the Holodomor. For the debate on whether it as a genocide, see Holodomor genocide question.

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Holodomor denial (Ukrainian: заперечення Голодомору, romanized: zaperechennia Holodomoru) is the claim that the Holodomor, a 1932–33 man-made famine that killed millions in Soviet Ukraine,[1] did not occur[2][3][4] or diminishing its scale and significance.

Officially, the government of the Soviet Union denied the occurrence of the famine and it also suppressed information about the famine from the very beginning of it until the 1980s. The Soviet government's denial of the occurrence of the famine was also circulated by some Western journalists and intellectuals.[2][5][6] It was echoed at the time of the famine by some prominent Western journalists, including The New York Times' Walter Duranty.

According to Jurij Dobczansky, Holodomor denial is easily distinguished from serious scholarship, and "generally consists of especially vitriolic anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian tirades" and is often accompanied by accusations of foreign influence and Nazi sympathies, or ulterior motives.[7]: 160 

  1. ^ Dolot, Miron (1985). Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust. W. W. Norton & Company. p. xv. ISBN 0-393-30416-7.. ISBN 978-0-393-30416-9
  2. ^ a b Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, Vintage books, Random House Inc., New York, 1995, ISBN 0-394-50242-6, pages 235-236.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Radzinsky was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference reflections was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ "Famine denial". The Ukrainian Weekly. 14 July 2002. Archived from the original on 24 February 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  6. ^ Shelton, Dinah (2005). Encyclopedia of genocide and crimes against humanity. Macmillan Reference. p. 1055. ISBN 978-0-02-865850-6. Retrieved 5 November 2015 – via Google Books. The Soviet Union dismissed all references to the famine as anti-Soviet propaganda. Denial of the famine declined after the Communist Party lost power and the Soviet empire disintegrated.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Dobczansky was invoked but never defined (see the help page).