this one is weird for me to read

I wrote this essay in 2001. It's funny for me to read because I remember feeling really professional about it. I had to do a seminar about it at school, too. I was really nervous, but it was the end of the year and not many were coming to class anymore. There were two other people - one who had to present herself - and the teacher.

Anyway, because this is my first post, I just want to explain that I want my writing in one place, no matter how bad it is at first. I am going to post the essays I either like, or want to keep working on from high school, and the same goes for my university classes (but I won't be putting in any psyc assignments. I think I am going to stick with philosophy and literature, because that is what I love.

This is a self-indulgence blog. I have another blog that's not as selfish or nearly as pretentious and mainly, I started this blog to make my other one less pertentious, by taking down the essays there, and posting them here.

Feel free to comment, but please: no jargon-only comments, ok. makes my teeth hurt.

This essay was from my ModWestCiv class with Anita Rusak (who is still my favourite teacher: she hugged me everytime she saw me). I always had an extreme sense of drama when it came to essays in high school, so I'll warn you ahead of time:

Somehow, it doesn't seem to have a title...or footnotes.

The Ukraine declared it's independence for, the first time in the 20^th Century, in 1917. The Ukraine was then incorporated into the Soviet Union within two years when the Bolsheviks came to power. Soon, there was a strengthening in the Ukrainian nationalist movement and it became apparent to the Soviet government that the hopes for Ukrainian independence would be a major threat to their power.

In 1930, Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin created a 5 year plan to implement collectivized farming in the Soviet Union. Collectivized farming allowed the state to decide how much of what crops were to be produced, how much would be paid to the peasants for their work, and how much would go to the state at what price. Farmers who resisted were persecuted, exiled, and even killed. The peasantry in Russia showed little opposition to the plan because they had a past tradition of communal farming, but the Ukrainians had an individualistic farming tradition of private land ownership.

Collectivization was going on schedule in the Russian republic, but the Ukrainians still opposed the plan bitterly. One way that the Ukrainian farmer showed his opposition was to slaughter all of his livestock before joining. Later on, the death penalty was put in place for such an action.

In 1929, only 4% of the farms were collective, but by 1931, over half were collectivized. The main reason that Stalin did this was to get more financing for industrialization. But this policy had disastrous effects on agricultural productivity. In 1930, 7.7 million tons of grain were taken out of the Ukraine which was 33% of their harvest of 23 million tons. Although Ukraine produced only 27% of all of the grain harvested in the USSR, it supplied 38% of the Soviet Unions grain procurement. In 1931, Moscow kept the quota of 7.7 million tons even after it became apparent that the harvest would only yield 18.3 million tons. Regardless of this fact, Stalin raised Ukraine’s grain procurement quota for 1932 by 44%. In doing this, there was no grain left for the peasant farmers and no grain was to be given to anyone who’s quota had not been met.

To jump back a bit. On August 7, 1932, the law on inviolability of socialist property was adopted. This law declared all collective property “sacred and inviolate”. Anyone who so much as took a handful of grain off of collective property was considered an enemy of the people and they were either executed, or due to extenuating circumstances, imprisonment for no less than 10 years and confiscation of all property. A second part of the decree stated that any collective farmers who attempted to force other farmers off the kolkhoz (or collective farm) would be faced with 5 to 10 years in a concentration camp. Some villages were blacklisted for allegedly sabotaging grain deliveries and they were faced with an economic blockade. Any village that had not delivered the required amount of grain would have a complete ban on all trade in the village and any goods in the village would be removed. As well, all state and cooperative stores were immediately closed.

Basically, these actions led to millions of Ukrainian people dying of starvation. Party officials with the aid of regular troops and secret police were merciless against anyone who refused to give up their grain and seeds.

An internal passport system was implemented to ensure that no one left the area in search of food and all railroads and roads were blocked to see that no one came in with food. Ukrainian grain was collected and stored in grain elevators that were guarded by military units and secret police units while Ukrainians were starving in the immediate area.

You have to remember that Ukrainian soil is very fertile and the years 1932 and 1933 had the highest levels of rainfall in the decade. So although many people still believe that the famine was caused by drought, there was no natural evidence to support this.

Conservative estimates place the death toll at about 5,000,000 people, although it is believed to be around 8 million and even as high as 14 million. The Russian government has never released any statistics, or even admitted that this famine existed, but indirect references were accidentally made and some sources say that 15-25% of the Ukrainian population was killed by starvation or accompanying illnesses. The population at the time was about 32 million.

The main reason that people believe that this famine was created was like I said before, because of the resistance towards collectivization. But others believe that the real reason was to crush any hopes of Ukrainian Independence. And during this time, many Ukrainian writers and intellectuals were killed because of suspicious ideas of nationalism.

This topic is very controversial because of its lack of documents and records, and it has only been recently that people began to acknowledge that this was not a famine caused by drought or natural causes. In 1983, the 50^th anniversary of the famine, many people were outraged at the fact that it wasn’t even mentioned, but in the past few years more people have begun to talk about this issue and recognize this as an act of genocide.

This was only the second of three famines. The first was in 1921-23, and the third was in 1946-47. Many believe that the other two famines were also man-made, but information regarding those events is even more scarce than this one. The Ukraine became independent for the second time in the 20^th century in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.