Russian invaders destroy ‘anti-Russian’ memorials to victims of Holodomor in occupied Kherson oblast
Russian propaganda media have reported discovering a memorial still intact in occupied Kherson oblast to the victims of Holodomor, the man-man famine of 1932-33 which killed several million Ukrainians. The original report from the Russian state-controlled RIA Novosti was clearly intended as a ‘denunciation’ of those Russians or collaborators in occupied Nova Maiachka who have failed to demolish what may be the last remaining Holodomor memorial in occupied parts of Kherson oblast. While Ukraine and at least thirty other countries have recognized Holodomor as an act of genocide, the current Russian regime is waging an aggressive policy of denial and banning books which set out historical evidence as ‘extremist’.
The Russian reports invariably refer to Holodomor using inverted commas and a small letter and try to claim that there was no difference between the situation in Ukraine and that in many other parts of the then Soviet Union. Were there serious grounds for such a position, Moscow would not need to effectively criminalize the publication or reference to internationally recognized historians who present a different point of view.
Russian denial of Holodomor and historical distortions began long before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the propaganda has now become part of the Kremlin narrative used to justify its war of aggression. It is claimed, for example, that “the subject” of Holodomor is “part of anti-Russian propaganda”, supposedly pushed in the 1930s by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and somehow “taken up by Nazi propaganda” [sic].
Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian historical memory are part of a general attempt to eradicate all that is Ukrainian on occupied territory This began back in 2014 in both occupied Crimea and the Russian proxy ‘Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics’ [‘LPR/DPR’]. In August 2015, a Memorial to the Victims of Political Repression and Holodomor was dismantled in Snizhne, within ‘DPR’. Such destruction was claimed to be aimed at the “reinstatement of historical justice”.
By October 2022, the Russians had destroyed the Memorial to Victims of Holodomor in Mariupol. The monument was made of granite and erected in 2004 near the Drama Theatre which was sheltering around a thousand residents when it was bombed by the Russians on 16 March 2022. Here too the Russians produced a propaganda video claiming that Mariupol residents were in favour of the monument’s destruction, while only showing one collaborator.
Monuments to the Victims of Holodomor were also ostentatiously destroyed in occupied parts of Kherson oblast in late 2023. The occupation forces in Ivanivka Hromada boasted of having destroyed at least fourteen memorials to Victims of Holodomor. Although seeming to boast of their destructive actions, the perpetrators did, in fact, wear masks.
Further destruction was reported in occupied Luhansk in July 2024, with the Russian propaganda ‘Luhansk information centre’ announcing the dismantling of stone monuments to the Victims of Holodomor and to the Victims of Stalin’s Repression on Remembrance Square in occupied Luhansk.
The above-mentioned list of books labelled ‘extremist’ does not just contain works of world-renowned historians, telling the truth about Ukrainian and Russian history, but also works by Ukrainian writers and thinkers. Russia is also very aggressively seeking to remove the Ukrainian language from schools and everyday life on occupied territory, and essentially crush Ukrainian identity, while killing, imprisoning or ‘deporting’ those who are most clearly unwilling to undergo such enforced ‘Russification’.