I have no link to this but the author is accredited here. As there is no link, have posted a longer excerpt than normal, I hope that is ok. It is a long article, but I found it fascinating and revealing of how "history" is dictated.

I seek balanced views on this and anyone with a knowledge to advise. It relates to how reports of the famine in the Soviet Union were spun to promote capitalist propaganda, as was practice in that era, even down to falsified photographic evidence.

This has, however, sunk into history as the resurgence in interest in the 1980s demonstrates, highlighting that history is often written by the side with the loudest publicist...

By John Puntis
July 2002

Quote:

In 1922 the Soviet Union experienced severe famine conditions in some areas following on from the wars of intervention when imperialist powers had sought to crush the new Soviet state. Famine conditions recurred again in 1933, particularly, but not exclusively, in the Ukraine. There are two versions to this second famine that are radically different. An objective analysis indicates the famine to have resulted from a combination of poor climatic conditions and sabotage on the part of the rich peasants or kulaks in the face of the collectivisation of agriculture. Ukrainian nationalists however argue that the famine was deliberately contrived by Stalin in order to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people, and resulted in millions of needless deaths, in fact death and destruction on such a scale that it dwarfs the Nazi holocaust. Documentary evidence produced to support this claim is often endorsed by academics such as Robert Conquest, or James Mace of HarvardUniversity. Such evidence is shaky in the extreme and often relies on discredited accounts from the 1930’s pro-fascist press in America, or even Nazi documents. Despite this it continues to resurface, most notably in the 1980s as part of an attempt by Ukrainian nationalists to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the famine, and at the same time to fuel the cold war rhetoric of the Reagan era. The same old grainy photographic images appear time and time again, purporting to show victims of the Ukraine famine, but these are almost always undocumented, or if traced back actually come from famine relief documents from the 1922 famine or even earlier. Cobbled together in the film ‘Harvest of Despair’ such pictures were shown on UK television despite having been rejected by some public service networks in the US because of a blatant lack of objectivity. Ukrainian nationalist organisations in Canada and elsewhere continue to propagate the notion of deliberate famine genocide, while carefully glossing over their own anti-semitic, pro-Nazi and collaborationist origins. A search on the web for ‘Ukrainian Famine Genocide’ resulted in 845 references to this ‘man made’ famine, as usual graphically illustrated with pictures for an earlier era. In this talk I will explore some of the background to these various claims and counter claims, with reference to the excellent book on the subject by Douglas Tottle (Fraud, famine and fascism. The Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard. Progress Books, Toronto, 1987. ISBN 0-919396-51-8) Journalistic fraud in the 1930s In the autumn of 1934, an American using the name of Thomas Walker entered the Soviet Union. After less than a week in Moscow, the remainder of his 13 day stay was spent in transit to the Manchurian border, at which point he left the USSR never to return. Four months later a series of articles began in the Hearst press in America, by Thomas Walker, “noted journalist, traveller and student of Russian affairs who has spent several years touring the Union of Soviet Russia”. The articles described a famine in the Ukraine that had claimed six million lives, and was illustrated with photographs of corpses and starving children. Walker was said to have smuggled in a camera under “the most difficult and dangerous circumstances”. Louis Fischer, an American writer living in Moscow at the time was suspicious. Why had the Hearst press sat on these sensational stories for ten months before publication? He established that Walker’s short visit to the Soviet Union could not possibly have allowed him to even visit the areas he described and photographed. He also pointed out that Walker’s photographic evidence was distinctly odd: not only were the pictures suggestive of an earlier decade (Fischer thought probably of the 1921 Volga famine) but contained a mixture of scenes taken in both summer and winter. Fischer also noted that the 1933 harvest in the Ukraine had been good. Some of the pictures were subsequently identified as showing scenes from the Austro-Hungarian empire and World War 1, and it was known that Hearst newspapers were digging up old pictures and retouching them for use as propaganda. Pictures some times appeared labelled as having been taken in Russia, and at other times the same picture is relocated to the Ukraine for obviously political reasons. Not only were the photographs a fraud, and the trip to the Ukraine a fraud, but Thomas Walker himself was a fraud, turning out to be an escaped convict by the name of Robert Green who had served time for forgery. At his subsequent trial following recapture he admitted that his series of pictures used in the Hearst newspaper articles were fakes and were not taken in the Ukraine as stated. Despite these facts, the same photos are still those used in commemoration posters, on web sites and in the film ‘Harvest of Despair’. The Hearst Press The Hearst Press needless to say continued with its famine genocide campaign despite the Walker fiasco. This is not surprising when we consider that Hearst himself was known to millions of Americans as "America's number one fascist". (One of Mussolini's chief sources of personal income during the early 1930s was from being a paid correspondent for the Hearst Press). In 1934 Hearst visited Nazi Germany and met Hitler. Following this visit, the Hearst Press began to promote famine genocide articles on the Ukraine. French premier, Edward Herriot who had recently returned from travelling in the Ukraine publicised the fact that he had seen no evidence of any famine. Following the Walker articles, Hearst went on to try and convince Americans that the Soviet Union was a land of utter starvation, genocide and cannibalism. At the time this was often recognised as politically motivated sensationalism, but over the passage of years these fabrications have become transformed into "primary evidence". By noting those features of the 1930s campaign and the selective memories of those who helped the Hearst Press in propagating the famine-genocide thesis, light can be cast on the character of today's famine-genocide campaign. Simultaneously with the launch of Hearst's 1935 outpourings, the Nazi press in Germany and sympathetic papers elsewhere in Europe began publishing similar stories. At this time a book by Dr Ewald Ammende was published entitled "Human life in Russia". This has had a lasting influence on those who propagate the famine-genocide myth, and was republished in 1984. The book makes little pretence of objectivity crediting Hearst correspondents, accounts from Nazi German and Fascist Italy, and reproducing allegations by unnamed 'travellers' and 'experts'. Most photographic evidence of the famine-genocide theorists can be traced back either to Ammende's book or to Thomas Walker. The origins of the photographs are not documented, although it should be noted that Ammende was involved with famine relief work in 1921-2. The pictures are said to have been taken in the streets and squares of Kharkov in the summer of 1933, although only 10 of 26 appear to show urban scenes. There are no signs or landmarks to help set them in context. "Human Life in Russia" contains additional pictures that did not appear in the German edition. These are claimed to have been taken by Dr Ditloff, director of the German Government Agricultural concession in the north Caucuses. One might wonder how a Nazi functionary came to be wandering freely around the Ukraine taking photographs, but in any case in later publications the same photographs are either unattributed or attributed to a completely different source. In fact, some pictures have been identified as coming from the 1922 famine, and some show winter scenes despite apparently having been taken in summer. Other publications use the same pictures either with no accreditation or accredited to Thomas Walker, despite the fact that they were used to portray events in 1932/3 and Walker claimed to have taken them in the spring of 1934. It is clear that the photographic evidence is fraudulent, and was used primarily as part of a campaign to undermine and discredit the Soviet Union. Despite this, they continue to be used to this day. Cold War The famine genocide campaign of the 1930s leaned heavily on dubious right wing sources and was not accepted by mainstream historians at the time, leading some Ukrainian nationalists to speak of a pro-Soviet, left wing or even Jewish conspiracy to suppress the truth. In the 1950s the Nationalists published books such as "The Black Deeds of the Kremlin" to propagate their interpretation of history. A section is devoted to Nationalist allegations of Soviet mass executions during the 1930s in Vynnitsa. Unearthed during Nazi occupation in 1943, the graves were examined by a Nazi commission and used in propaganda films. Post war testimony by German soldiers revealed however, that this was a Nazi propaganda deception, the bodies being those of Jews executed by the SS and Ukrainian militia. The gruesome allegations of cannibalism in volume 2 of "Black Deeds" has lead to it being referred to as the "Ukrainian Nationalist cookbook"!

It's interesting that you should start this thread Viv.

We have a similar one going in 'stalin debate'...

Having lived in Ukraine for 27 months, I can tell you that the famine was a real occurance.

In addition to the 'Walker fiasco' there were other 'journnalists' claiming that the famine was not only NOT occuring but that people all over the USSR had more than enough to eat.

While I cannot SHOW you these sources as proof of what I'm saying, I have spoken with people who survived the famine (holodomor) and who have confirmed for me that while there were severe drought conditions in the years leading up to the famine, it was really caused by several factors in concert: bureaucratic ineptitude, forced collectivization, millions of tonns of grain being exported inspite of people going hungery...

there is certainly some amount of 'spin' surrounding this issue, but it is a fact of history regardless of how many millions of people died as a result of starvation.

__________________
"Yes. That's correct. Making a statement that's 100% true can't be bigoted."

I already did a thread on this before we had a history section, but nobody challenged my conclusions.

__________________
Viva Fidel

"If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism"

"North Americans don't understand... that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity"

Joe,

feel free to try and 'revise' history all you want, but until you go there and see it for yourself, you are as guilty of spreading propaganda as the Nazi sources you site in your last post.

You want to know what happened in Ukraine? Go there. Ask Ukrainians about it. Ask Georgians about it. Ask Russians about it.

Many things contributed to this famine, but to blame it entirely on the actions of anti-socialist peasants is not only intellectually dishontest it is down right insulting to every Ukrainian who lives and all those who died.

You might as well be arguing that the holocaust never happened. You are supporting the same basic idea.

__________________
"Yes. That's correct. Making a statement that's 100% true can't be bigoted."

Did i deny there was famine ? No, so take your holocaust slur elsewhere !

I suggest it is you who insults those who lost their lives. It is you who willingly or unwillingly looks to shield the truth. Just read some history books, prefferebly ones not compiled by nazi sympathisers.

Your word and testament means nothing, absolutely zilch. The stats however do mean something. Either provide evidence to the contrary, or your argument is worthless.

My position is supported by documented fact. Your position depends on word of mouth and nazi's.

__________________
Viva Fidel

"If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism"

"North Americans don't understand... that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity"

Joe, did you author that piece, or it is lifted from an article?

I'd like to see a third-party source for all this. Revisionist history can lie just as well as current history. If you could provide a third-party source that corroborates these facts, I would be very much obliged.

__________________
An' it harm none, do as ye' will.


Never argue with an idiot. He'll just drag you down to his level of intelligence and beat you with experience.

I wrote it all

The links from my info are at the bottom

__________________
Viva Fidel

"If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism"

"North Americans don't understand... that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity"

Very good

Regarding the other posters in the thread, I think the famines are fact and the existence of them is not the true issue. It is the spin surrounding it and how liability was shifted to the extent that the reality is obscure and it is now difficult to establish what happened.

Do those who discard the author's theories also discard the cold war, the communist witch hunt era...it is a given, is it not, that there was substantial political spin?

What I wanted to analyse is whether that spin has now passed into history as fact, regardless of the purpose of it and the knowledge most people have that it was history was edited for political reasons.

These political reasons have long expired, but it seems history has been damaged permanently?

So let me get this straight…

You’re basing your entire argument on ONE article about a Nazi bureaucrat and ONE book written not by a historian but by a trade union activist whose bias is as obvious as the nose on your face.

Is that right?

Keep in mind that while the so-called Nazi propagandists were ‘making up’ the famine, there were also ‘respectable’ journalists like John Reed and Walter Duranti in the US claiming that the famine was not nearly as bad as was being reported in spite of the fact that Reed had been there himself and seen it with his own eyes. His diaries, published years later, betray his earlier argument when he comments on the mass deaths all across the countryside.

Now let’s move on to what you claim is ‘documented fact’:

According to you (because you site no source nor do you give a timeframe) 18 million horses were slaughtered. (that would mean that at the time there would have been roughly 1 horse for every two Ukrainians, a number I seriously doubt)

According to a different source, between 1927 and 1934, 2.5 million horses were slaughtered. (From 5 million down to 2.5 million)

You also claim that 30 million cattle were killed. (that would mean one cow or bull for nearly every Ukrainian, again a number I doubt).

According to my source, from ’27 to ’34, 3 million head of cattle were killed. (From 8.3 down to 5.2 million). 36% of the total.

Finally, you claim there were over 100 million sheep and goats. Do you honestly believe that to be true? That would be a sheep and two goats for every single Ukrainian!

…. From ’27 to 34’ almost 6 million sheep and goats were killed. (from 7.9 million down to 2.2 million)

Curiously you don’t mention pigs. Something Ukrainians eat much more of than either beef, mutton, or horse. The number of pigs from ’27 to ’34 remained almost constant, starting at 4.4 million and dropping to 4.2 million. While there was a drop in numbers in ’32, the numbers rebounded significantly within a year.

Now lets move on. You mentioned that large tracts of land were never planted and that this contributed to the famine. You’re absolutely right. Why were thousands of hectares not planted? Because 300 thousand ‘kulaks’ were forcibly evicted from their homes and sent to Siberia. We’re talking about roughly 10 percent of the population. Reduce the workforce by ten percent and see if it doesn’t have an impact on agricultural output.

So…

There’s something more than ‘word of mouth’ for you.

These are my sources:

Ãåíîöèä óêðà¿íñüêîãî íàðîäó: Ãîëîäîìîð 1932–1933 ðð.

Êîíêâåñò Ðîáåðò. Æíèâà ñêîðáîòè: Ðàäÿíñüêà êîëåêòèâ³çàö³ÿ ³ ãîëîäîìîð

Gareth Jones Soviet Union Newspaper Articles 1930-33

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW6FH_YTU40

Óðîêè ³ñòîð³¿: Ãîëîäîìîð 1932-33 ãã.

HOLODOMOR WEBSITE

Ukrainian Famine

Holodomor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Finally, since you mentioned ‘reading history books’, something I do quite often for what it’s worth, here’s a list of just some of the books I did take the time to read WHILE I was living in Ukraine.

‘A Hunger Most Cruel’

‘Execution by Hunger’

‘Harvest of Sorrow’

‘Ukrainians: the Unexpected Nation’

‘Borderlands’

‘The Reconstruction of Nations’

You know as well as I do that we can ‘site fact’ to each other all day long. The internet is a wonderful tool. But until you put your money where your mouth is, your opinions really are meaningless. You claim to be a socialist, am I right about that? Well, you’re in college right? Why don’t you go do a year abroad, in the former Soviet Union, and see for yourself what life is like there? You’ll see the ‘utopia’ in all its splendor. Then when you’re done, you can come back here and either tell me to go to hell or admit that I was right.

Because only after you have the real experience of having lived in a place with a 70 year history of socialist rule can you even begin to comprehend what life was like or what the ‘truth’ is. So I challenge you to go and have that experience, put your money where your mouth is, and then come back here and tell us what you found.

__________________
"Yes. That's correct. Making a statement that's 100% true can't be bigoted."