What Was the Holodomor? Americans Could Soon Find Out Firsthand
By Daisy Luther
From 1932-1933, a mass genocide took place in Ukraine. Millions of people, including children, were deliberately starved to death by the USSR during the Holodomor event. A state-organized famine was deployed when the Ukrainian people continued to thrive and keep their cultural identity separate from the USSR, despite being controlled by Communist forces.
Here’s a quick history lesson before we get into how this relates to prepping and the current events surrounding us.
How do you destroy an entire culture?
According to the Holodomor Research and Education Center, dictator Joseph Stalin tried first to erase their culture in other ways.
His rule was characterized by the ruthless elimination of anyone and anything he perceived as a threat to his power. For Stalin, the independent-minded farmers and cultural freedoms in Ukraine constituted such threats. Starting in 1929, Ukraine’s writers, artists, educators, intellectuals and cultural elites were liquidated for being “too Ukrainian” and not “Soviet” enough. In 1930 Stalin wiped out Ukraine’s independent church, the Ukrainian Autocephalous (independent) Orthodox Church, and its clergy. Following the destruction of the intellectuals and the church, the Ukrainian farmers, who made up 80 percent of Ukraine’s population and thus were carriers of the language and culture, were next to be dealt a mortal blow.
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When those efforts were not sufficient to assimilate the independent Ukrainians, the next step was breathtakingly ruthless.
As part of the Five-Year Plan of 1928–1933, the Soviet leaders conducted a massive reorganization of privately owned farms into collective (state-owned) farms and imposed high crop requisition quotas. It was the sale of grain that was to pay for industrialization. Independent farmers were forced to give up to the state their private land, livestock and equipment, without compensation. They simply became workers of the collective farm, who would be paid only if the collective farm handed over to the state the quota in crops set by Moscow.
The Ukrainians initially rebelled, but their rebellion was met with brutal retaliation. The state-controlled media demonized the wealthiest of the farmers, their families, and the community leaders. They were “othered” to the point that it was of little surprise when they were either executed by firing squad or deported to a Siberian concentration camp.
Collectivization = Starvation
The USSR followed up by stringently enforcing the collectivization of Ukrainian agriculture. They demanded exorbitant amounts of wheat – more than the people could produce. When farmers did not meet their quotas, brutal punishments were meted out. The government searched every home for anything that might be edible, and that food was taken by force by Communist brigades.
Communist brigades were sent out to search the homes of individual farmers, not only for hidden grain and seed but to confiscate all kinds of foodstuffs — onions, pumpkins, vegetables put up in jars for the winter — anything the families might use to survive the winter.
A law enacted in August 1932 (“The Law of Five Ears of Grain”) stated that anyone, even a child, caught taking any produce from a collective field could be shot or imprisoned for stealing “socialist property.” A decree in January 1933 sealed the borders. To further ensure that Ukrainian farmers did not leave their villages to seek food in the cities, the Soviet government started a system of internal passports, denied to farmers, so that they could not travel or obtain a train ticket without permission. Those caught attempting to flee to the cities or beyond Ukraine’s borders, where conditions were better, were imprisoned or sent home to die.
Over one-third of the villages in Ukraine and the Kuban (an area in the Russian republic adjacent to Ukraine, where the population was mostly Ukrainian) were put on a “blacklist” (“chorna doshka”) for failing to meet grain quotas and were forbidden from receiving any supplies. This was essentially a collective death sentence for these villages.
The grain taken from the farmers was sold to other countries or left to rot while Ukrainians died of starvation. Historically, the collectivization of farming has always ended up in death, productivity, and despair. And the Holodomor was no different.
The situation was a silent humanitarian crisis
The USSR fervently denied all accusations of wrongdoing. To this day, the Russian Federation admits there was a famine, but they deny they deliberately implemented it.
A few foreign reporters covered the disaster. British foreign correspondent Malcolm Muggeridge wrote for the Fortnightly Review, May 1, 1933:
On one side, millions of starving peasants, their bellies often swollen from lack of food; on the other, soldiers, members of the GPU (secret police) carrying out the instructions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They had gone over the country like a swarm of locusts and taken away everything edible, they had shot or exiled thousands of peasants, sometimes whole villages, they had reduced some of the most fertile land in the world to a melancholy desert.
Still, most of the world remained unaware of the level of genocide that was occurring. It wasn’t until the 1980s that Ukrainian schools were able to teach students about this part of their country’s history. Later historians agree that the goal was to subjugate the Ukrainian people and force them to become little more than slaves to the USSR.
How does this relate to the modern-day?
As the situation in the United States devolves, it’s difficult to imagine that our current situation is simply a series of surprising, unfortunate events. Some things are outside human control, such as the megadrought, wildfires, and some hurricanes and floods. Mother Nature isn’t helping us out this year.
But wait, there’s more.
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Take into account the following:
- Cargo ships filled with merchandise are not allowed to dock and unload
- Non-farmers and foreign entities are buying up farmland
- We’re facing an economic catastrophe that looks to only be getting worse
- The “othering” of those with different political or medical opinions
- The President himself is fueling the division
- Our culture has been quietly and insidiously damaged over the past few decades.
Let’s look at these things in more detail.
Dozens of cargo ships are lingering off the coast, not allowed to dock
At least 80 ships filled with merchandise, including food, are stuck off-shore and not allowed to dock and unload. Much of the delay could be due to “Covid safety regulations.” Look at the long list of regulations from different port countries. Sailors on cargo ships must meet the requirements of multiple countries, which are often different. Here’s the CDC’s lengthy list of rules to dock in the United States and drop off much-needed supplies.
So let me make sure I understand this correctly. Cargo ships carrying things we desperately need are a dire threat. But unvaccinated, sometimes-Covid-positive migrants who are not legally in the US are A-OK? That’s what “Let’s Face Reality” Fauci says.
Representative Henry Cueller provided this view of “reality.” (emphasis mine)
Cuellar said migrants dropped off at bus stations by Border Patrol agents are likely not tested before they leave to other cities. There is currently no system in place to keep track of whether migrants get tested for COVID-19 once they leave DHS custody.
“Once the Border Patrol releases them, then they have the notice to appear [at immigration case hearing] and they can go anywhere in the U.S.,” Cuellar said. (source)
A notice to appear…but they’re not tracked? They’re not tested? They’re not – gasp – vaccinated?
But… cargo ships… no, they have rules.
The buy-up of farmland
A tremendous amount of farmland is no longer in the hands of small farmers.
The biggest private owner of farmland in the country is Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Media mogul Ted Turner owns 2 million acres of land upon which he grazes the world’s largest privately-owned herd of buffalo. In 2019, foreign investors owned 35.2 million acres of farmland.
And then there are the corporate investors.
Non-farmer domestic entrepreneurs and investors are snapping up farmland at a rapid clip, also doing much to drive up the cost of agricultural production for those who don’t own their land.
“Institutional investors—pension funds, university endowments, private foundations, and other organizations that manage huge pools of capital—are increasingly incorporating farmland into their investment portfolios,” wrote University of California, Santa Cruz sociologist Madeleine Fairbairn, in her new book Field of Gold: Financing the Global Land Rush. “The same is true of those extremely wealthy people who in financial circles are euphemistically termed ‘high-net-worth individuals.’ This investor interest has spawned a host of new asset management companies eager to accommodate and encourage investors’ newfound passion for soil … managers [who] promise to shepherd investor capital safely, and often extremely profitably, into plots of farmland the world over.” (source)
A few months back, we published an article on how investors and major banks are hedging their bets on hunger – oops, we mean, helping to feed the country. It’s also important to note that the Biden administration is paying farmers not to farm. They’re reallocating USDA funds that farmers need to survive these difficult times to a green agenda.
The economic disaster
Covid mandates have brought upon us the worst economic disaster of many of our lifetimes. More than 200,000 small businesses have shuttered forever. 5.3 million jobs have been lost since February 2020, right before we went on a “two-week pause” and have never returned. For more than a year, people were being paid more to stay home than to work. Our national debt has reached such dizzying levels it’s hard to imagine a future without a default.
An astonishing number of people are living in situations of poverty and hardship. 19 million adults live in households that did not get enough to eat. 12 million adult renters are behind on rent. (source)
The effect of all this on personal finances has been utterly devastating for millions of families. People are already stealing food. Don’t expect this to get better soon.
The “othering”
As with other manufactured crises, the “othering” has already begun to set American against American. On multiple fronts, they have turned against one another. Racial flames were stoked throughout 2020. The people have been turned against one another politically for at least five years. When there’s talk about “re-educating” others about their political beliefs, we’ve crossed the Rubicon, perhaps the point of no return.
Then there’s the “othering” concerning the pandemic. Many people have quietly been vaccinated and gone about their business, leaving others to make their own decisions. But then there are the people who radically demonize anyone who opts not to be vaccinated, saying that they should have to live outside the lines of society, be unable to work, shop, or receive any type of federal assistance, including things like Social Security, into which they’ve paid their entire adult lives.
It isn’t just in physics where every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Folks who choose not to be vaccinated are beginning to retaliate in anger against those discriminating against them.
The simmering rage is being fueled right from the top
And our President is not helping matters. In fact, he’s making it worse. Is it just Biden bungling along as Biden does, or is it malicious?
Of his unsuccessful attempt to handle the Covid pandemic, he has tried to aim the wrath of Americans toward other Americans.
President Joe Biden is trying to concentrate the anger of the nation’s inoculated majority against the refusal of 25% of eligible Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19…
…“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said from the State Dining Room. “And your refusal has cost all of us.”
The unvaccinated minority, he added, “can cause a lot of damage, and they are.”
…
“A distinct minority of Americans, supported by a distinct minority of elected officials, are keeping us from turning the corner,” Biden said. “These pandemic politics are making people sick, causing unvaccinated people to die.” (source)
While saying “the buck stops” with him, he’s blamed everyone but himself for the utterly catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan. He threw Border Patrol under the bus to distract from his disastrous handling of our southern border crisis. Of his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $3.5 billion budget bill, he peevishly said that anyone who objects to these bills is “complicit in America’s decline.” He has people so fired up that a person actually followed a member of US Congress into a bathroom and filmed themselves yelling at the Senator.
What happened to “uniting Americans” as he promised to do in his inaugural address? To anyone paying attention, it seems that he’s either terrible at uniting people or is deliberately dividing people.
Whether intentional or not, there are certainly people being set up as “the others” – and those could be the people not deserving of food or medical treatment when supplies are limited. (CNN’s Don Lemon already said something implying that, in fact.)
The destruction of American culture
This leads us back to the destruction of our culture. I won’t go too deeply into this, but for decades, our school system has been indoctrinating kids with socialist/communist beliefs. Now, as parents begin to object strenuously, they’re being targeted by the FBI as possible terrorists.
Our statues are being torn down if there’s even a hint of something that would be unsavory in modern days. Our history is being erased. Our children are being taught that capitalism is evil – not just crony capitalism, but any capitalism. A country where you could once get ahead with hard work has turned into a country that despises those who get ahead. A person who I helped out financially in the past blocked me on social media because I said that people making outrageous demands of employers didn’t understand the hoops the government makes us jump through to employ anyone. The words “I’m offended” are held up like a shield against any non-politically correct opinions. University professors promote violence against “others” with few, if any, repercussions. We have young people who are apparently frightened by all-caps.
Anyone who is 40 or older will tell you, this is NOT the country we grew up in
It’s something different and darker. The things that made America American are being taken away. For crying out loud, even flying the American flag in America is “offensive.”
If this is not the destruction of our culture, I don’t know what is.
Our kids are not being taught the truth about Communism in schools. They’re being inundated in 45-second intervals with pro-Communism messages on China-owned TikTok. But the reality of Communism is this:
Here, the genocide of a ‘class’ may well be tantamount to the genocide of a ‘race’ —the deliberate starvation of a child of a Ukrainian kulak as a result of the famine caused by Stalin’s regime “is equal to” the starvation of a Jewish child in the Warsaw ghetto as a result of the famine caused by the Nazi regime.
Are we facing an American Holodomor?
In looking at the treatment of Ukrainians during the Holodomor, are we Americans who are anywhere politically right of AOC looking at our future? The pieces are in place.
- Shortages are being manufactured by the halt of transport and shipping.
- Farmland is right on the verge of either being collectivized or privately owned by just a handful. (Control the food, and you control the people. – Kissinger)
- Americans have reached epic levels of anger and divisiveness.
- Many consider being American to be a source of shame instead of pride.
- Should we switch to an entirely digital currency, it’s almost certain that your transactions will be tracked, controlled, and taxed. Is it possible that the unvaxed will be unable to purchase necessities until they comply?
We are being ruled by force, not a representative government. Dissenting commentary is demonetized and censored. Only the opinions that are “right-think” get any airtime. Cancel culture is alive and thriving. People are being led to believe that dissent no longer exists or is just the wheelhouse of crazy radicals.
How long before the “others” are simply starved out? Never think it cannot happen.
This was the first instance of a peacetime genocide in history. It took the extraordinary form of an artificial famine deliberately created by the ruling powers. This savage combination of words for the designation of a crime — “an artificial, deliberately planned famine” — is still incredible to many people throughout the world, but indicates the uniqueness of the tragedy of 1933, which is unparalleled, for a time of peace, in the number of victims it claimed.
Do you think Americans are facing their own Holodomor?
We like to be solution-oriented around here. My advice is to stock up while you can, don’t keep everything in one place, and learn to be as self-reliant as possible. Sign up for our newsletter for daily advice.
Do you think the idea of an American Holodomor is outrageous and far-fetched? Or do you think we can learn from history that it’s entirely possible? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Source: The Organic Prepper
Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, adventure-seeking, globe-trotting blogger. She is the founder and publisher of three websites. 1) The Organic Prepper, which is about current events, preparedness, self-reliance, and the pursuit of liberty; 2) The Frugalite, a website with thrifty tips and solutions to help people get a handle on their personal finances without feeling deprived; and 3) PreppersDailyNews.com, an aggregate site where you can find links to all the most important news for those who wish to be prepared. Her work is widely republished across alternative media and she has appeared in many interviews.
Daisy is the best-selling author of 5 traditionally published books, 12 self-published books, and runs a small digital publishing company with PDF guides, printables, and courses at Learn.TheOrganicPrepper.com You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Gab, MeWe, Parler, Instagram, and Twitter.