Bulgaria Recognises the Holodomor as Genocide. What Does That Mean?
The News
Annually, on February 1, Bulgaria commemorates the victims of the communist regime. In 2023, on this day, Bulgaria’s Parliament passed a resolution that recognizes the Holodomor in Ukraine (1932–1933) as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. So far, Bulgaria has become the most recent* country, among more than 20 other countries, to recognize the Holodomor as genocide.
In the context of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, this decision is one of the ways to show solidarity with Ukraine and condemn crimes against humanity, such as genocide. Before the resolution was drafted by the GERB-UDF and Democratic Bulgarian coalition, the European Parliament took the vote on the same matter.
One hundred and thirty-four members of Bulgaria’s Parliament voted in favor of the resolution. Twenty - six members of the pro-Kremlin right-wing party ‘Vozrazhdane’ voted against it. Parliamentarians for the Bulgarian Socialist Party did not vote.
*as of February 25, 2023
The Term
In the Ukrainian language, the word Holodomor literally means “exhausting with starvation” (Holod — starvation, Mor — exhaustion). It also refers to a period in Ukrainian history, in 1932 -1933, when the Soviet regime killed millions of people with man-made famine.
The Holodomor also took place in different parts of the Soviet Union, including Kazakhstan, Belarus, and some parts of Russia, together with Cuban, the region which Ukrainians heavily populated. People of different ethnicities, such as Bulgarians and Greeks living in Ukraine back then, were affected as well.
The number of victims reported depends on the source — from 3,9 million up to 10,5 million. To picture the scale of the tragedy, the Ukrainian National Museum of the Holodomor — Genocide provides the following numbers: every minute, 20 people, on average, were dying of starvation during the Holodomor.
The reason behind such differences is that the Soviet authorities destroyed many documents related to the Holodomor, trying to conceal the tragedy. The objective attempts to estimate how many people died became possible only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Up to this date, Russia gives no access to the archives that could give more details on the tragedy: a more precise number of victims and information on those who are responsible for the genocide.
The Background
Since ancient times, Ukraine has been known as an agricultural country with fertile soil. The concept of land is tightly linked to Ukraine’s folklore and identity. Back then, Ukrainians believed that the soil itself was a living creature since it could produce food. Often, Ukrainian proverbs compare land to a giving mother.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the majority of Ukrainians used to live in a village area. In 1928, as the USSR was established, Joseph Stalin and his proponents announced the creation of collective farms, known as kolkhoz. Generally, Ukrainians were against the idea of giving up their land as it would limit their individual rights. Thus, Ukrainians resisted.
In 1932, the Soviet regime implemented the plan of taking away food from the Ukrainian villagers as well as their land for kolkhoz.
The historian of Harvard University, Serhii Plokhy, states that although the man-made famine took place in different parts of the Soviet Union, in Ukraine specifically, it was tight to the ethnic factor. “The attack on Ukrainian peasantry was happening side by side with the attack on Ukrainian culture and identity,” Plokhy says in his book The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. The resistance of the peasants was compared to the manifestation of nationalism.
“The attack on Ukrainian peasantry was happening side by side with the attack on Ukrainian culture and identity,” Serhii Plokhy
The Policies
In 1932, Stalin signed a policy that set a goal to collect 356 million pounds of grain from the newly-formed kolkhozes in Ukraine. This goal was unrealistically and unreasonably enormous. Later, this premise was used while confiscating food and punishing the villagers for not harvesting enough grain according to the plan.
About 25% of all villages in Soviet Ukraine were on the black boards. Having a village mentioned on that board meant that the state institutions would block the village and prohibit everyone from leaving the place, trading with other villages, or getting any food supplies.
Additionally, there was another repressive policy force known as The Law of Five Ears of Grain. With this law, the Soviet state claimed that every kolkhoz and its property, including food resources, belonged to the state. For example, gathering 5 grain ears from the field would have been enough to get a 10-year jail term or to be killed.
The Statement of the Bulgarian Resolution
The text of the Bulgarian resolution prohibits the denial of the fact that the Holodomor in Ukraine was a genocide. This document is an acknowledgment that the famine was a man-made plan to exterminate the people of Ukraine. Such a stand battles the Soviet cover-up narrative about the natural causes behind the deaths of millions.
However, according to the attorney at law, Asen Kochanov, this document is rather a formality: within the legislative framework, this resolution is not enough to prosecute those who are responsible for the tragedy. Moreover, to prosecute the organizers of the Holodomor is impossible at least because all of them are most likely dead by now.
Still, Kochanov says that even though it is a formality from the legal standpoint, it is an important decision from the political standpoint. He hopes that it will “bring an acknowledgment of other genocides done by empires and help to realize the truthful nature of the Soviet Union.” “It marks a shift in the public perception, especially in relations with Russia,” he states.
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Anastasiia Mozghova is a student at the American University in Bulgaria, majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication. She believes that food should never be used as a weapon.
