By Laura Sheeter
BBC News, Kiev
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Up to 10 million may have died in the Ukraine famine
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Ekaterina Marchenko is insistent.
"I can't have you leaving here hungry," she says. "Here,
just have this bowl of soup, and maybe later you'll feel like having a
sandwich, or a cup of tea and a piece of cake."
The hospitable 87-year-old cannot bear the thought of
her guest being less than full, but then she has a horror of going
hungry.
Seventy-five years ago, Ekaterina saw seven members of
her family and almost all of her neighbours starve to death, in a
man-made famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine.
Tree bark and roots
The "Holodomor" or "famine plague" as it is known in
Ukraine, was part of Joseph Stalin's programme to crush the resistance
of the peasantry to the collectivisation of farming.
When in 1932 the grain harvest did not meet the
Kremlin's targets, activists were sent to the villages where they
confiscated not just grain and bread, but all the food they could find.
The confiscations continued into 1933, and the results
were devastating. No-one is sure how many people died, but historians
say that in under a year at least three million and possibly up to 10
million starved to death.
The horrors Ekaterina saw live with her still.
"We didn't have any funerals - whole families died," she tells me.
"Of our neighbours I remember all the Solveiki family
died, all of the Kapshuks, all the Rahachenkos too - and the Yeremo
family - three of them, still alive, were thrown into the mass grave."
Ekaterina, her mother and brother, survived by eating
tree bark, roots and whatever they could find - but she says starvation
drove others to terrible deeds.
"One day mother said to us, 'children, you can't take
your usual shortcut through the village anymore because the grandpa in
the house nearby killed his grandson and ate him - and now he's been
killed by his son...
And don't go near the priest's house either - because the neighbours there have killed and eaten their children.'"
The famine was part of Stalin's plan to crush peasant resistance
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Though some, like Ekaterina, can never forget what
happened, many Ukrainians had never heard of the famine until the
country's independence - such was the secrecy about it during Soviet
times.
But every year since independence, events to commemorate
the famine get larger, and momentum is growing behind a campaign to
raise international awareness of what happened.
This weekend marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Holodomor, and Ukraine is starting a year of commemorations.
Events are being held across the country. And around the
world members of the Ukrainian diaspora are also marking the
anniversary.
Ukraine has officially declared the Holodomor a genocide
- it says the famine was part of a campaign to crush Ukrainian
nationalism.
Russian objections
Ukraine's borders were sealed during the famine, say scholars, to ensure the subjugation of the whole country.
It is a message Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko wants to take to the world.
An exhibition of the famine forms part of Ukraine's remembrance
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This anniversary is being used to boost a campaign for
other countries, and the United Nations, to officially declare the
Holodomor a genocide, too.
But Russia objects. The Russians are accusing Ukraine of using the tragedy of the past to gain political advantage.
The famine could not be genocide, they say, because
there was starvation in many parts of the Soviet Union at the time and,
they add, for the Ukrainians to claim it was aimed at them is an insult
to those of other nationalities who died.
Within Ukraine there is division too.
The head of the country's Communist Party, Pyotr
Simonenko, does not believe there was any deliberate starvation at all,
and he accuses President Yushchenko of using the famine to stir up
hatred.
"He draws people's attention to history so as not to
answer questions about the problems of today - he speaks of the dead,
not thinking of the living," he says.
"Yushchenko has set a time bomb under Ukrainian-Russian relations.
"His insistence that this be recognised as a genocide -
which is by the way, an idea with no foundation - will only lead to
someone using it in the future to ignite inter-ethnic conflict."
Though few in Ukraine share Mr Simonenko's
interpretation of history, there is some sympathy with his view that
the commemoration has been politicised, and that the campaign could
damage relations with Russia.
None of this, however, is deterring President
Yushchenko. He says he wants a new law criminalising Holodomor denial -
and to see new monuments to the famine built in Ukraine before the end
of the year's commemorations.
It remains to be seen whether those monuments will bring
Ukrainians together in remembrance, or divide them along political
lines.
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