Holodomor denial

Soviet head-of-state Mikhail Kalinin responded to Western offers of food by telling off "political cheats who offer to help the starving Ukraine," and commented, "Only the most decadent classes are capable of producing such cynical elements."{{cite journal |first=Robert |last=Conquest |author-link=Robert Conquest |url=http://www.hoover.org/research/how-liberals-funked-it |title=How Liberals Funked It |journal=Hoover Digest |issue=3|date=30 July 1999 |access-date=4 November 2015}}

On instructions from Litvinov, Boris Skvirsky, embassy counselor of the recently opened Soviet Embassy in the United States, published a letter on 3 January 1934, in response to a pamphlet about the famine.{{cite journal |first=Marco |last=Carynnyk |url=http://ukrweekly.com/Archive/1983/398325.shtml |title=The New York Times and the Great Famine, Part III |journal=The Ukrainian Weekly |date=25 September 1983 |volume=LI |issue=39 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050829073245/http://ukrweekly.com/Archive/1983/398325.shtml |archive-date=29 August 2005}} In his letter, Skvirsky stated that the idea that the Soviet government was "deliberately killing the population of Ukraine" was "wholly grotesque." He claimed that the Ukrainian population had been increasing at an annual rate of 2 percent during the preceding five years and asserted that the death rate in Ukraine "was the lowest of that of any of the constituent republics composing the Soviet Union", concluding that it "was about 35 percent lower than the pre-war death rate of tsarist days."New York Times, as quoted in James E. Mace, [http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1988/028822.shtml "Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120425091429/http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1988/028822.shtml |date=25 April 2012 }} (paper delivered at a conference on "Recognition and Denial of Genocide and Mass Killing in the 20th Century", held in New York City on 13 November 1987), The Ukrainian Weekly, 10 January 1988, No. 2, Vol. LVI

Mention of the famine was criminalized, punishable with a five-year term in the Gulag labor camps. Blaming the authorities was punishable by death.{{Cite Q|Q108386870|pages=96}} William Henry Chamberlin was a Moscow correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor for 10 years; in 1934 he was reassigned to the Far East. After he left the Soviet Union he wrote his account of the situation in Ukraine and North Caucasus (Poltava, Bila Tserkva, and Kropotkin). Chamberlin later published a couple of books: Russia's Iron Age and The Ukraine: A Submerged Nation.{{cite book |first=William Henry |last=Chamberlin |author-link=William Henry Chamberlin |title=The Ukraine: A Submerged Nation |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.178779 |year=1944 |publisher=Macmillan |ol=6478239M}}{{cite web |url=http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=160 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071109104841/http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=160 |archive-date=9 November 2007 |title=What Is the Ukraine Famine Disaster of 1932–1933? |work=semp.us |date=2 January 2005}} He wrote in the Christian Science Monitor in 1934 that "the evidence of a large-scale famine was so overwhelming, was so unanimously confirmed by the peasants that the most 'hard-boiled' local officials could say nothing in denial."{{cite journal |last=Chamberlin |first=William Henry |author-link=William Henry Chamberlin |date=20 March 1983 |orig-year=1934 |title=Famine proves potent weapon in Soviet policy |url=http://www.ukrweekly.com/archive/pdf2/1983/The_Ukrainian_Weekly_1983-12.pdf |journal=The Ukrainian Weekly |volume=51 |issue=12 |page=6 |access-date=22 July 2012 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120301214714/http://www.ukrweekly.com/archive/pdf2/1983/The_Ukrainian_Weekly_1983-12.pdf |archive-date=1 March 2012 |df=dmy-all |postscript=: Reprint of original article dated 29 May 1934}}

The true number of dead was concealed. At the Kyiv Medical Inspectorate, for example, the actual number of corpses, 9,472, was recorded as only 3,997.{{cite book |first=Robert |last=Conquest |author-link=Robert Conquest |title=The Dragons of Expectation. Reality and Delusion in the Course of History |publisher=W. W. Norton and Company |date=2004 |isbn=0-393-05933-2 |page=102}} The GPU was directly involved in the destruction of actual birth and death records, as well as the fabrication of false information to cover up information regarding the causes and scale of death in Ukraine.Boriak, Hennadii (Fall 2001). "The publication of sources on the history of the 1932-1933 famine-genocide: history, current state, and prospects". Harvard Ukrainian Studies 25 (3-4): 167–186.

The January 1937 census, the first in 11 years, was intended to reflect the achievements of Stalin's rule. Those collecting the data, senior statisticians with decades of experience, were arrested and executed, including three successive heads of the Soviet Central Statistical Administration. The census data itself was locked away for half a century in the Russian State Archive of the Economy.Catherine Merridale, "The 1937 Census and the Limits of Stalinist Rule" Historical Journal 39, 1996

The Soviet Union denied the existence of the famine until its 50th anniversary, in 1983, when the worldwide Ukrainian community coordinated famine remembrance. {{Citation needed|date=September 2023}} The Ukrainian diaspora exerted significant pressure on the media and various governments, including the United States and Canada, to raise the issue of the famine with the government of the Soviet Union.

In February 1983, Alexander Yakovlev, the Soviet Ambassador to Canada, in a secret analysis "Some thoughts regarding the advertising of the Ukrainian SSR Pavilion held at the International Exposition "Man and the world" held in Canada" put forward a prognosis for a campaign being prepared to bring international attention to the Ukrainian Holodomor which was spearheaded by the Ukrainian nationalist community. Yakovlev proposed a list of concrete proposals to "neutralise the enemy ideological actions of the Ukrainian bourgeoise nationalists".{{cite book |last=Serhiychuk |first=Volodymyr Ivanovych |script-title=uk:Як нас морили голодом 1932-1933 |title=Yak nas moryly holodom 1932-1933 |trans-title=How we were exhausted by Starvation 1932-1933 |language=uk |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ckqmGAAACAAJ |edition=3rd |year=2006 |publisher=Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Centre for Ukrainian Studies |page=322 |isbn=978-966-2911-07-7 |via=Google Books}}

By April 1983, the bureau of the Soviet Novosti Press Agency had prepared and sent out a special press release denying the occurrence of the 1933 famine in Ukraine. This press release was sent to every major newspaper, radio and television station as well as University in Canada. It was also sent out to all members of the Canadian parliament.Сергійчук В. Як нас морили Голодом 1932-1933 - Київський Національний Університет, Київ, 2006 с.323 (In Ukrainian) Serhiychuk, V. How we were tired by Famine 1932-33 - Kyiv University, Kyiv, 2006 page 323

File:HolodomorEdmonton.jpg, Canada]]

On 5 July 1983, the Soviet Embassy issued an official note of protest regarding the planned opening of a monument in memory of the victims of the Holodomor in Edmonton attempting to smear the opening of the monument.

In October 1983, the World Congress of Ukrainians led by V-Yu Danyliv attempted to launch an international tribunal to judge the facts regarding the Holodomor. At the 4th World Congress of Ukrainians held in December 1983, a resolution was passed to form such an international tribunal.{{Cite book |last=Serhiĭchuk |first=Volodymyr |title=Yak nas moryly Holodom 1932—1933 |publisher=Kyiv National University |year=2006 |isbn=966-2911-07-3 |location=Kyiv |pages=323–325 |script-title=uk:Як нас морили Голодом 1932—1933 |trans-title=How they murdered us by Famine 1932–1933 |author-link=Volodymyr Serhiychuk}}

Former Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk recalled that he was responsible for countering the Ukrainian Diaspora's public education campaign of the 1980s, marking 50 years of the Soviet terror famine in 1983: "In the early 1980s many publications began appearing in the Western press on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most horrific tragedies in the history of our people. A counter-propaganda machine was put into motion, and I was one of its wheels." The first book on the famine was published in Ukraine only in 1989, after a major shake-up that occurred in the Communist Party of Ukraine when Volodymyr Ivashko replaced Volodymyr Shcherbytsky and the Political Bureau decided that such book could be published. However, even in this book, "the most terrifying photographs were not approved for print, and their number was reduced from 1,500 to around 350."Kravchuk, Leonid Mayemo te, shcho mayemo: spohady i rozdumy, Kyiv, 2002, Stolittya (392 p.) {{ISBN|966-95952-8-2}}, pp. 44-46,

This recognition of the Holodomor as genocide has played an instrumental role in shaping modern Ukrainian identity. as Lina Klymenko asserts, that Ukraine’s efforts to solidify its historical narrative of resilience and resistance against oppression are integral to its nation-building process.{{Cite journal |last=Klymenko |first=Lina |date=2016-10-21 |title=The Holodomor law and national trauma construction in Ukraine |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00085006.2016.1234588 |journal=Canadian Slavonic Papers |language=en |volume=58 |issue=4 |pages=341–361 |doi=10.1080/00085006.2016.1234588 |issn=0008-5006|url-access=subscription }} The institutionalization of Holodomor remembrance has further distinguished Ukraine from Russia, reinforcing national unity and historical memory. As ultimately, former President of Ukraine (1991-94), Leonid Kravchuk, exposed the official cover-up attempts and came out in support of recognizing the famine, named the "Holodomor", as a genocide, noting "this was a planned action and that this was a genocide committed against the people. But we can’t stop there. Yes, it was against the people, but it was directed from a different centre."{{Cite journal |last=Anosova |first=Yulia |date=2015-11-03 |title=The Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine as a Crime of Genocide under International Law [Holodomor 1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraini iak zlochyn henotsydu zhidno z mizhnarodnym pravom], eds. Volodymyr Vasylenko and Myroslava Antonovych |journal=Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal |volume=0 |issue=1 |pages=237–239 |doi=10.18523/kmlpj52720.2015-1.237-239 |issn=2414-9942|doi-access=free }}

According to Patrick Wright,{{cite book |quote=He (Duranty) had become creatures of the Soviet censors |title=Iron Curtain |last=Wright |first=Patrick |author-link=Patrick Wright (academic) |year=2007 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-923150-8 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/ironcurtainfroms0000wrig_a3q1/page/306 306], 307 |url=https://archive.org/details/ironcurtainfroms0000wrig_a3q1 |url-access=registration}} Robert C. Tucker,{{cite book |title=Stalin in Power |last=Tucker |first=Robert |author-link=Robert C. Tucker |year=1992 |publisher=Norton & Company |isbn=978-0-393-30869-3 |page=191 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L9pcTIEP1OQC&pg=PA191 |via=Google Books}} and Eugene Lyons, one of the first Western Holodomor deniers was Walter Duranty, who won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize in journalism, in the category of correspondence, for his dispatches on Soviet Union and the working out of the Five Year Plan.[http://duranty.pelech.org/duranty2003/pulitzer2003.pdf "Correspondence between Markian Pelech and the Board of the Pulitzer Prizes regarding Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303183632/http://duranty.pelech.org/duranty2003/pulitzer2003.pdf |date=3 March 2016}} (30 December 2002 – 28 April 2003) In 1932, he wrote in the pages of The New York Times that "any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda".{{Cite news |last=Duranty |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Duranty |date=1933-08-24 |title=FAMINE TOLL HEAVY IN SOUTHERN RUSSIA: Death Rate During Last Year Has Trebled—Food Supply Now Held Assured. BREAD PRICE EXPLAINED Increase in Moscow Reported as Part of Move to End the Ration System There. FAMINE TOLL HIGH IN SOUTH RUSSIA |edition=Late City |volume=82 |pages=1, 9 |work=New York Times |issue=27606 }} He said that while there was a bad harvest, and consequent food shortages, it did not rise to the level of a famine and that "there is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."{{cite book |title=Assignment in Utopia |last=Lyons |first=Eugene |year=1991 |publisher=Transaction Publishers |isbn=978-0-88738-856-9 |pages=572, 573|chapter=The Press Corps Conceals a Famine |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZXLhwVJvfXMC&pg=PA572}}{{Cite news |last=Duranty |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Duranty |date=1933-03-31 |title=RUSSIANS HUNGRY, BUT NOT STARVING: Deaths From Diseases Due to Malnutrition High, Yet the Soviet Is Entrenched. LARGER CITIES HAVE FOOD Ukraine, North Caucasus and Lower Volga Regions Suffer From Shortages. KREMLIN'S 'DOOM' DENIED Russians and Foreign Observers In Country See No Ground for Predictions of Disaster. |edition=Late City |volume=82 |page=13 |work=New York Times |issue=27460 }} Some have disputed the validity of his distinction between death from starvation and death from disease that is exacerbated by malnutrition.

In his reports, Duranty downplayed the impact of food shortages in Ukraine. As Duranty wrote in a dispatch from Moscow in March 1933, "These conditions are bad, but there is no famine" and "But—to put it brutally—you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."{{Cite web |title=New York Times Statement About 1932 Pulitzer Prize Awarded to Walter Duranty |url=https://www.nytco.com/company/prizes-awards/new-york-times-statement-about-1932-pulitzer-prize-awarded-to-walter-duranty/ |access-date=2021-03-03 |website=The New York Times Company |language=en-US}}

Duranty also wrote denunciations of those who wrote about the famine, accusing them of being reactionaries and anti-Bolshevik propagandists. In August 1933, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna called for relief efforts, stating that the famine in Ukraine was claiming lives "likely... numbered... by the millions" and driving those still alive to infanticide and cannibalism. The New York Times, 20 August 1933, reported Innitzer's charge and published an official Soviet denial: "in the Soviet Union we have neither cannibals nor cardinals". The next day, the Times added Duranty's own denial. {{Citation needed|date=September 2023}}

British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who went to live in the Soviet Union in 1932 as a reporter for the Manchester Guardian and became a fierce anti-communist, said of Duranty that he "always enjoyed his company; there was something vigorous, vivacious, preposterous, about his unscrupulousness which made his persistent lying somehow absorbing."Muggeridge, Malcolm: The Green Stick: Chronicles of Wasted Time Volume I Chapter 5 (1972). Muggeridge characterised Duranty as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism."Robert Conquest. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine Oxford University Press (1987), {{ISBN|0-19-505180-7}}, page 320. [https://archive.org/details/harvestofsorrows00conq ]

However, by the end of 1933, the new Roosevelt administration were actively looking to dismiss any bad news that came out from the Soviet Union, as tensions rose in Germany with Hitler's rise and the Japanese threat to expansion. Duranty, played a role in the "cover-up" of the famine in Ukraine, as President Roosevelt “read Duranty’s reporting carefully – encouraged him to believe that there might be a lucrative commercial relationship too.” With this Litvinov arrived in New York to sign and make this newfound partnership official with the accompany of Duranty. With no doubt Duranty's impact of denying the famine in his writing and his allegiance to the USSR further suppressed the idea of a famine even exisiitng in Ukraine, despite his writitng holding contradictory notions with his conversations with William Strang, as he reckoned "'it quite possible that as many as 10 million people may have died directly or indirectly from lack of food’, though that number never appeared in any of his reporting."

An international campaign for the retraction of Duranty's Pulitzer Prize was launched in 2003 by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and its supporters. The newspaper, however, declined to relinquish it, arguing that Duranty received the prize for a series of reports about the Soviet Union, eleven of which were published in June 1931. In 1990, the Times published an editorial calling his work "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper."{{cite news |last=Meyer |first=Karl E. |author-link=Karl E. Meyer |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/24/opinion/the-editorial-notebook-trenchcoats-then-and-now.html |title=The Editorial Notebook; Trenchcoats, Then and Now |newspaper=The New York Times |date=24 June 1990 |access-date=30 September 2016}}

Prominent writers from Ireland and Britain who visited the Soviet Union in 1934, such as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, are also on record as denying the existence of the famine in Ukraine.Edvard Radzinsky Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives, Anchor, (1997) {{ISBN|0-385-47954-9}}, pages 256-259. According to Radzinsky, Stalin "had achieved the impossible: he had silenced all the talk of hunger... Millions were dying, but the nation hymned the praises of collectivization".{{cite web |url=http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/communism/com107.html |title=Stalin-Wells talk / the verbatim record and a discussion by G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, J.M. Keynes, E. Toller and others |publisher=Monash University |date=2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070902093951/http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/communism/com107.html |archive-date=2 September 2007}}

Another famine denier was Sir John Maynard.{{Cite book |last=Shkandrij |first=Myroslav |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1111577641 |title=Revolutionary Ukraine, 1917-2017: history's flashpoints and today's memory wars |date=2019 |isbn=978-0-429-31948-8 |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=61 |oclc=1111577641}} In 1934 the British Foreign Office in the House of Lords stated that there was no evidence to support the allegations against the Soviet government regarding the famine in Ukraine, based on the testimony of Maynard, who had visited Ukraine in the summer of 1933 and rejected "tales of famine-genocide propagated by the Ukrainian Nationalists".{{Citation needed|date=February 2009}}

During a visit to Ukraine carried out between 26 August – 9 September 1933, former French Prime Minister Édouard Herriot, said that Soviet Ukraine was "like a garden in full bloom".Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, {{ISBN|0-674-07608-7}}, pages 159-160 Herriot declared to the press that there was no famine in Ukraine, that he did not see any trace of it, and that this showed adversaries of the Soviet Union were spreading the rumour. "When one believes that Ukraine is devastated by famine, allow me to shrug my shoulders", he declared. The 13 September 1933 issue of Pravda was able to write that Herriot "categorically contradicted the lies of the bourgeoisie press in connection with a famine in the USSR." It was alleged by anti-communist activist Harry Lang, who claimed to have visited Ukraine at the same time, that Herriot was shown a carefully stage-managed version of Ukraine that hid effects of famine and poverty.{{cite Q|Q108386870|pages=122}}{{cite conference |url=http://ncua.inform-decisions.com/eng/files/EThevenin.pdf |title=France, Germany and Austria: Facing the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine |first=Etienne |last=Thevenin |date=29 June 2005 |conference=James Mace Memorial Panel, IAUS Congress, Donetsk, Ukraine |access-date=20 June 2021 |page=8 |archive-date=14 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220314210530/http://ncua.inform-decisions.com/eng/files/EThevenin.pdf |url-status=dead }}

In the 1980s, the union organizer and journalist Douglas Tottle with the help of Soviet authorities{{cite book |last1=Applebaum |first1=Anne |title=Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine |date=2017 |publisher=Penguin Random House |isbn=9780385538855 |edition=1 |location=New York |page= |chapter=14: The Cover-Up}} wrote a book arguing that the famine in Ukraine was not genocide, under the title "Fraud, Famine and Ukrainian Fascism", to be published in Soviet Ukraine. However, before final publication, reviewers of the book in Kyiv insisted that the name of the book be changed, claiming "Ukrainian fascism never existed".Сергійчук В. Як нас морили Голодом 1932-1933 - Київський Національний Університет, Київ, 2006 с.324 (In Ukrainian) Serhiychuk, V. How we were tired by Famine 1932-33 - Kyiv University, Kyiv, 2006 page 324In his book, Searching for place, Lubomyr Luciuk commented: "For a particularly base example of famine-denial literature, see Tottle, Fraud, famine, and fascism...", see Lubomyr Luciuk, Searching for place: Ukrainian displaced persons, Canada, and the migration of memory, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000, p. 413. {{ISBN|0-8020-4245-7}} Tottle refused this name change, and as a result the book publication was delayed by several years.{{Citation needed|date=September 2021}}

In 1987, Tottle published the book in Toronto, Canada as Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: the Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard{{cite book |url=http://rationalrevolution.net/special/library/famine.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050411204357/http://www.rationalrevolution.net/special/library/famine.htm |archive-date=2005-04-11 |title=Fraud, famine, and fascism: the Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard |author=Douglas Tottle |publisher=Progress Books |location=Toronto |year=1987 |isbn=978-0-919396-51-7 |access-date=11 December 2015|author-link=Douglas Tottle}} through Progress Publishers. In a review of Tottle's book in the Ukrainian Canadian Magazine, published by the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, Wilfred Szczesny wrote: "Members of the general public who want to know about the famine, its extent and causes, and about the motives and techniques of those who would make this tragedy into something other than what it was will find Tottle's work invaluable".The Ukrainian Canadian, April 1988, p. 24) Historian Roman Serbyn responded that "in the era of glasnost, Szczesny could have rendered his readers no greater disservice". Serbyn likened Tottle's book to The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, a work of Holocaust denial by Arthur Butz.{{cite web|author=Roman Serbyn|author-link=Roman Serbyn|url=http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/serbyn/|title=The Last Stand of the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide Deniers|work=infoukes.com|year=1989|access-date=4 November 2015}} Some of Tottle's material appeared in a 1988 article in the Village Voice, "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust: A 55-Year-Old Famine Feeds the Right".{{cite web|last1=Serbyn|first1=Roman|author-link1=Roman Serbyn|title=Competing Memories of Communist and Nazi Crimes in Ukraine|url=http://www.ukrainianstudies.uottawa.ca/pdf/P_Serbyn_Danyliw07.pdf|publisher=Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Ottawa|access-date=23 September 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110706211152/http://www.ukrainianstudies.uottawa.ca/pdf/P_Serbyn_Danyliw07.pdf|archive-date=6 July 2011}}

In 1988, the nonprofit World Congress of Free Ukrainians held an International Commission of Inquiry Into the 1932–33 Famine in Ukraine to establish whether the famine existed and its cause. Tottle's book was examined during the Brussels sitting of the commission,{{cite web|first=Jacob W.F.|last=Sundberg|url=http://www.ioir.se/ukrfamine.htm|title=International Commission of Inquiry Into the 1932–33 Famine in Ukraine. The Final Report (1990)|publisher=ioir.se|date=10 May 1990|access-date=4 November 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041204224314/http://www.ioir.se/ukrfamine.htm|archive-date=4 December 2004|df=dmy}} held between 23 and 27 May 1988, with testimony from various expert witnesses. The commission president Professor Jacob Sundberg claimed that Tottle received assistance from the Soviet government, based on information in the book that he felt would not be easily publicly available.A.J.Hobbins, Daniel Boyer, Seeking Historical Truth: the International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-33 Famine in the Ukraine, Dalhousie Law Journal, 2001, Vol 24, page 166

{{See also|Holodomor in modern politics}}

The issue of the Holodomor has been a point of contention between Russia and Ukraine, as well as within Ukrainian politics. According to opinion polls, Russia has experienced an increase in pro-Stalin sentiments since the year 2000,{{r|Monaghan_2015}} with over half viewing Stalin favourably in 2015.{{r|Anon_MT_2015}} Since independence, Ukrainian governments have passed a number of laws dealing with the Holodomor and the Soviet past.

By 2009, Holodomor denial was a matter of Russian government policy and the subject of its disinformation operations.{{Cite journal |last=Dobczansky |first=Jurij |date=2009 |title=Affirmation and Denial: Holodomor-related Resources Recently Acquired by the Library of Congress |url=https://www.academia.edu/28799900 |journal=Holodomor Studies |volume=1 |issue=2 [Summer-Autumn 2009] |pages=155–164}}{{Rp|page=162}} The Russian government does not recognize the famine as an act of genocide against Ukrainians, viewing it rather as a "tragedy" that affected the Soviet Union as a whole.{{cite web | url=https://www.acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2017/11/27/russia-still-denies-holodomor-was-genocide | title=Russia still denies the Holodomor was 'genocide' | date=19 June 2022 }} A 2008 letter from Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko asserted that "the tragic events of the 1930s are being used in Ukraine in order to achieve instantaneous and conformist political goals."{{cite news |last1=Kucera |first1=Joshua |title=Is Ukraine Next? |url=https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/02/is-ukraine-next.html |access-date=19 June 2021 |work=Slate |date=23 February 2009}}

Although from writers such as Alexander Motyl, his research indicated that Soviet and Russian denialism has paradoxically strengthened efforts to preserve the memory of the Holodomor both in Ukraine and among Ukrainian diasporas.{{Cite journal |date=2014-08-26 |title=Bohdan Klid / Alexander J. Motyl (Eds.), The Holodomor Reader. A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932–33 in Ukraine. Compiled by Bohdan Klid and Alexander J. Motyl. Edmonton/Toronto, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press 2012 |url=https://doi.org/10.1515/hzhz-2014-0394 |journal=Historische Zeitschrift |volume=299 |issue=1 |pages=246–247 |doi=10.1515/hzhz-2014-0394 |issn=2196-680X|url-access=subscription }} The attempt to erase historical memory has motivated Ukrainian activists, scholars, and policymakers to institutionalize Holodomor remembrance as a central pillar of national identity. As former Ukrainain president Leonid Kuchma had established a national Holodomor Memorial Day in November of 1988, which was renamed to the Day of Memory for Victims of the Holodomors and Political Repressions in 2004.

English-language publications are catalogued according to Library of Congress Subject Headings distinguishing Holodomor denial ("works that discuss the diminution of the scale and significance of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 or the assertion that it did not occur."),{{Cite web |last=Congress |first=The Library of |title=Holodomor denial - LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies {{!}} Library of Congress, from LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress) |url=https://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2009005520.html |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=id.loc.gov}} and Holodomor denial literature ("Works that make such assertions").{{Cite web |last=Congress |first=The Library of |title=Holodomor denial literature - LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies {{!}} Library of Congress, from LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress) |url=https://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2009005519.html |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=id.loc.gov}}

In 2006, the All-Ukrainian Public Association Intelligentsia of Ukraine for Socialism published a pamphlet titled Mif o golodomore (The Myth of the Holodomor) by G. S. Tkachenko. The pamphlet claimed that Ukrainian nationalists and the US government were responsible for creating the "myth". Russian publicist Yuri Mukhin has published a book titled Klikushi Golodomora (Hysterical Women of the Holodomor), dismissing Holodomor as "Russophobia" and "a trump card of the Ukrainian Nazis." Sigizmund Mironin's "Golodomor" na Rusi (The "Holodomor" in Rus') argued that the cause of the famine was not Stalin's policies, but rather the chaos engendered by the New Economic Policy.

Sputnik News, a Russian state media outlet, ran an article denying the severity and causes of the famine in Ukraine.{{r|Young}}

A chapter of Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder covering the early 1930s famine in Ukraine under the Soviet Union goes into considerable detail, but the term "Holodomor" is avoided entirely, and Snyder did not explain why.

Holodomor denial is a form of historical negationism – falsification or distortion of the historical record about crimes against humanity – and as such it is subject to legal punishment in some countries.{{Cite book |last=Wierczyńska |first=Karolina |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1318993956 |title=Responsibility for negation of international crimes |publisher=Wydawnictwo Instytutu Wymiaru Sprawiedliwości |year=2020 |isbn=978-83-66344-43-3 |editor-last=Grzebyk |editor-first=Patrycja |location=Warsaw |pages=305–306 |translator-last=Matuszczak |translator-first=Mateusz |chapter=The Punishment of Negationism in the Experience of Central, Eastern, and Southern European States. Summary of the Second Day of the Conference |oclc=1318993956}} Ukraine's 2006 {{Interlanguage link|Law On the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine|uk|Закон України «Про Голодомор 1932—1933 років в Україні»}} makes it illegal to publicly deny the Holodomor, recognizing it as an insult to the memory of victims and humiliation of the dignity of the Ukrainian people.{{Cite web |title= |script-title=uk:Про Голодомор 1932-1933 років в Україні |trans-title=On the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine |url=https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/go/376-16 |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine |language=uk}}

In November 2022, Germany recognized the Holodomor as a genocide,{{cite web |last=Sitnikova |first=Iryna |date=2022-11-30 |title= |script-title=uk:Німеччина визнала Голодомор геноцидом українського народу |trans-title=Germany recognized the Holodomor with the genocide of the Ukrainian people |url=https://hromadske.ua/posts/nimechchina-viznala-golodomor-genocidom-ukrayinskogo-narodu |access-date=30 November 2022 |website=Hromadske}} at the same time as it amended a law to criminalize the approval, denial, and "gross trivialization" of war crimes and instances of genocide in a new paragraph 5 of the German Criminal Code, the Strafgesetzbuch, section 130.{{Cite web |date=2022-11-25 |title=Germany seeks to declare Ukraine's Holodomor a genocide |url=https://www.dw.com/en/germany-seeks-to-declare-ukraines-holodomor-a-genocide/a-63883055 |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=DW |language=en}}{{Cite web |date=2022-11-25 |title=Germany criminalizes denying war crimes, genocide |url=https://www.dw.com/en/germany-criminalizes-denying-war-crimes-genocide/a-63834791 |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=DW |language=en}}

{{See also|Outline of genocide studies}}

• Anti-Katyn
• Genocide denial
• Genocide recognition politics
• Holocaust denial
• Holodomor genocide question
• Holodomor in modern politics

{{Reflist|refs=

{{cite news|last1=Young|first1=Cathy|title=Russia Denies Stalin's Killer Famine|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/31/russia-denies-stalin-s-killer-famine.html|newspaper=The Daily Beast|access-date=30 September 2016|date=31 October 2015}}

{{cite news|title=More Than Half of Russians See Stalin in a Positive Light|url=https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/more-than-half-of-russians-see-stalin-in-a-positive-light-43055|access-date=29 September 2016|agency=Moscow Times|date= 20 January 2015}}

{{cite news|last1=Monaghan|first1=Jennifer| agency=Moscow Times|title=Was Stalin's Terror Justified? Poll Shows More Russians Think It Was|url=https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/was-stalins-terror-justified-poll-shows-more-russians-think-it-was-45301|access-date=29 September 2016|date=31 March 2015}}

}}

• Andreopoulos, George J., Ed. Genocide: conceptual and historical dimensions, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. {{ISBN|0-8122-3249-6}}
• Boriak, H. (2001). [http://www.jstor.org/stable/41036832 The Publication of Sources on the History of the 1932–1933 Famine-Genocide: History, Current State, and Prospects]. Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 25(3/4), 167–186.
• Colorosa, Barbara. Extraordinary evil: a brief history of genocide, New York: Penguin Group, 2007. {{ISBN|0-670-06604-4}}
• {{Cite Q|Q108386870}}
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• Crowl, James William. Angels in Stalin's Paradise. Western Reporters in Soviet Russia, 1917 to 1937. A case study of Louis Fisher and Walter Duranty, University Press of America, 1982. {{ISBN|0-8191-2185-1}}
• {{Cite book|last=Marson|first=James|title=Holodomor: Reflections on the Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Soviet Ukraine|publisher=Kashtan Press|year=2008|editor-last=Luciuk|editor-first=Lubomyr|location=Kingston, ON|pages=195–202|chapter=Holodomor denial protects Russia's self-image}}
• New Internationalist. Justice After Genocide. December (385). 2005.
• {{Cite web|last=Oliver|first=James|date=2014-11-17|title=On Holodomor denial, and fisking a denialist Russian professor of History|url=http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/12/17/on-holodomor-denial-and-fisking-a-denialist-russian-professor-of-history/|access-date=2021-10-15|website=Euromaidan Press}}
• Mace, James. [http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1987/528708.shtml Collaboration in the suppression of the Ukrainian famine] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225172225/http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1987/528708.shtml |date=25 February 2021 }}, paper delivered at a conference on "Recognition and Denial of Genocide and Mass Killing in the 20th Century", New York, 13 November 1987.
• Paris, Erna. Long shadows: truth, lies, and history, New York: Bloomsbury, 2001. {{ISBN|1-58234-210-5}}
• Springer, Jane. Genocide, Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2006. {{ISBN|0-88899-681-0}}
• Sullivant, Robert S. Soviet Politics and the Ukraine: 1917-1957. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962.
• Tauger, Mark B. [https://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2500600 The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933], Slavic Review, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 70–89
• Taylor, Sally J. Stalin's apologist: Walter Duranty, The New York Times' Man in Moscow, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. {{ISBN|0-19-505700-7}}
• Totten, Samuel, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charney, ed. Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Introduction by Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons. The Garland Reference Library of Social Science, Vol. 772. London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995.
• Waller, James. Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. {{ISBN|0-19-514868-1}}

• Harvest of Despair (1983), produced by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre.

• Sokolova, S. (2019). [https://doi.org/10.13166/jms/113374 Technology of Soviet Myth Creation about Famine as a Result of Crop Failure in Ukraine of the 1932–1933s]. Journal of Modern Science, 42(3), 37–56.

{{Historical revisionism}}

{{Conspiracy theories}}

{{Genocide topics}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Denial Of The Holodomor}}

Category:Propaganda in the Soviet Union

Category:Communist propaganda

Category:Historical negationism

Holodomor denial

Category:Pseudohistory

Category:Anti-Ukrainian sentiment