Russification of Donbass: what does the Holodomor of 1932-1933 have to do with it?
IRINA MIROCHNIK
Russification of Donbass was a very complex process.
In particular, after the revolution of 1905-1907. the influx of Russians into the industrial cities of the region increased greatly for a simple reason: unlike Ukrainians, Russian peasants were very poor and, in order to pay their debts for land, went to work in industrial cities.
In general, industrialization often leads to a mixing of the population due to the influx of labor migrants from all over the country, so this process was not unique for Ukraine.
The cities of Donbass were actively settled by Russians, and it would seem that the study could have been completed on this, but this is only the tip of the iceberg.
It’s time to unfold the dark pages of Ukrainian history.
In the 30s of the XX century. Ukraine was engulfed by Stalinist repressions, which led to almost the very destruction of everything Ukrainian.
It is worth mentioning only the Holodomor of 1932-1933.
Donbass, despite the large part of the urban working population, was no exception and suffered from the severe consequences of the Stalinist terror.
So, in 1932, the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, allegedly due to the needs of industrialization, set the annual rate of grain harvesting for the Donbass at the level of 606.3 thousand tons – a cosmic figure for an industrial region.
All forces were thrown into grain procurement.
It is ironic that even the same workers were forcibly taken away from the factories and sent to arable land.
Grain supplies were confiscated from the peasants, but this was not enough, and in the autumn of that year a terrible famine began.
In the Donetsk region, even earlier than in other regions, the regime of “black boards” was introduced – in 1931. The district executive committee listed villages that did not fulfill the grain procurement plan on black boards. This meant the cessation of all food supplies, the return of bread distributed for workdays, the reduction of loans – complete isolation.
All these actions, theoretically aimed at the development of industry, almost led to the complete collapse of the entire economy of Donbass, because famine began in the cities as well.
In 1932 the coal mining industry lost 17.3%. For example, it was necessary to recruit 1870 workers for the Gorlovskoye field, but only 16 people volunteered.
Although the workers received meager rations of food, they also starved.
Strikes broke out and were brutally suppressed.
In addition to the famine, an epidemic of typhus and other diseases broke out.
A desperate population was dying from the consumption of dead livestock.
In Mariupol and settlements by the sea, there were mass deaths due to dead fish, and around the city of Stalino (Donetsk) in just five days (February 27 – March 3), more than 4 thousand deaths were recorded.
Peasants who managed to get to the cities in the useless hope of somehow surviving died en masse right on the streets.
According to recent studies, more than 70,000 people died as a result of the Holodomor in Donbas.
The consequences of the Holodomor also affected the health of the local population.
Unfortunately, the documents do not report how many people died or became disabled from the indirect effects of the famine.
Let us cite only the fact that even at the end of the 30s, local schools could not enroll children in the first grades, and in order to improve the demographic situation, the USSR began a large-scale campaign to populate the deserted territories with collective farmers from Russia.
It is noteworthy that while the locals were barely making ends meet from the consequences of terror, visitors received significant benefits: they received a house and an estate, and were exempted from paying certain taxes.
To further humiliate the peasants, they were obliged to repair houses for visiting Russians (and before that, remove corpses from them) and share their grain with them, and sometimes even furniture.
The odious facts of the purchase of gramophones for immigrants at the expense of collective farms, that is, local Ukrainians, are also documented. An unpleasant surprise awaited those who were still able to escape from hunger: their homes were not returned to them.
All this was accompanied by the dominance of Russian culture. Russian classes were opened in schools, Russian textbooks were imported, literature and newspapers appeared in Russian. There were frequent cases of mutual hostility and anger between locals and settlers. The historical memory of the region was also lost:
Many people did not mention the Holodomor of the 1930s, and not because of indifference to their past: many families simply did not catch it, because they arrived later.
The overall consequences of the Holodomor and subsequent Russification were very large-scale.
However, not all scholars share this view of the Russification of Donbass.
In particular, Doctor of Historical Sciences Stanislav Kulchitsky argues that the Holodomor might not have led to the emergence of separatism in the region.
The historian says that the resettlement committee, created in 1933, moved to the current Kharkiv, Donetsk, Lugansk regions much more residents of other regions of Ukraine than Russians.
In his opinion, thousands of households on the scale of such a large region as Donbass are not too numerous, especially considering that not all of these families remained in Ukraine, so the causes of separatism should be sought in later times.
Conclusion
Be that as it may, the Holodomor inflicted grave harm on the population of Ukraine, and the Donbass was no exception. The Soviet genocide wiped out entire villages and killed thousands of Ukrainians. The results of the terror served as a pretext for the Soviet authorities to “diversify” the ethnic composition of the region. This policy has long been practiced by empires, and the Soviet government intervened not only in industrial cities, but also in the ancient Ukrainian villages of Donbass.
These and other aspects of the Russification of the region created favorable conditions for further Soviet cultural experiments, such as the creation of the Soviet man. As we see now, this led to fatal consequences both for the Donbass itself and for Ukraine as a whole.
Despite the fact that the archives of Donbass were never declassified due to Russian aggression, researchers still cite some figures: according to the historian Lesya Gasidzhak, in early 1933, 147 trains with people and cattle for collective farmers arrived at the Stalino railway station, in the same year – another 44 echelons with 3538 Russian families – and this is the data for only two stages with echelons. The total figure could be much higher. After the Second World War, these processes were activated: only one Donetsk region from Russia annually received 400-700 thousand people. It should be noted that not all people stayed there, but in any case, immigration aggravated the erosion of Ukrainian culture in the region more and more.
https://telegra.ph/Zrosiyshchennya-Donbasu-ta-pry-chomu-tut-holodomor-01-11
Writer Irina Mirochnik is the President at IMMER Group & Doctor of Philosophy in Law(PhD)
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