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Kyiv, November 2021: Ukrainians commemorate the millions of victims of the famine brought to the country by Stalin in the 1930s
Photo: SERGEY DOLZHENKO / EPA
The Holodomor, "killing by starvation," is one of the darkest chapters in Ukrainian history.
In the years 1932/1933, the Soviet ruler Josef Stalin systematically starved the people in what is now Ukraine.
In that winter alone, it is estimated that 3.5 million people died in the deliberate famine caused by the forced sale of grain.
In Germany and Europe, the suffering of the millions of Ukrainians is hardly known.
The parliamentary groups of SPD, Greens, FDP and CDU/CSU now want to change that.
The parliamentarians have drawn up a non-partisan motion in which they speak out in favor of recognizing the »Holodomor« as a genocide.
The application is to be discussed and approved in the Bundestag on Wednesday next week.
The paper is available to SPIEGEL.
"The whole of Ukraine was affected by hunger and repression, not just its grain-producing regions," says the motion.
»From today's perspective, a historical-political classification as genocide is obvious.
The German Bundestag shares such a classification,” write the initiators around Green MP Robin Wagener.
With forced collectivization, the Soviet leadership wanted to suppress peasants and the Ukrainian way of life, language and culture.
According to the cross-party paper, the forced famine was also aimed at the "political suppression of Ukrainian national consciousness."
The mass deaths from starvation were not the result of failed harvests, but were the responsibility of the political leadership of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
"The Holodomor thus represents a crime against humanity," said the parliamentarians.
The "Holodomor" came at a time of "the most massive crimes against humanity on the European continent, the cruelty of which was unimaginable until then," they write, adding: "These include the Holocaust of European Jews in its historical singularity, the war crimes of the Wehrmacht and the planned murder of millions of innocent civilians as part of the racist German war of extermination in the East, for which Germany bears historical responsibility".
The MPs call on the federal government to remember the victims of the "Holodomor" and to promote its international publicity - for example through educational offers.
She also had to counteract "any attempts to launch one-sided Russian historical narratives."
In addition, the parliamentarians draw a line from the past to the present of war-torn Ukraine and call for their support - "political, financial, humanitarian and military".
"Putin follows Stalin's cruel and criminal tradition," Green Party politician Wagener told SPIEGEL.
»Today, Ukraine is again being hit with Russian terror.
Once again, violence and terror are intended to deprive Ukraine of its livelihoods and subjugate the entire country," said the chairman of the German-Ukrainian parliamentary group.
The CDU foreign policy expert Knut Abraham called the upcoming recognition of the "Holodomor" as genocide by the Bundestag a "historic event" for German-Ukrainian relations.
"This is a moral and political classification that is intended to help ensure that such crimes are outlawed," Abraham told SPIEGEL.
According to the CDU MP, the German public must be better informed about Ukrainian history and “this genocide”.
Ukraine has long been campaigning internationally for the famine to be classified as a genocide.
Just a few days ago, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on the Bundestag to officially recognize the "Holodomor" as a genocide in a guest article for "Welt".
"It was a genocide, and it must be described as such - out of respect for the memory of the victims, also in order to restore historical justice," Kuleba wrote.
The point in time for the parliamentary initiative was not chosen by chance: since 1998, the fourth Saturday in November has been the official day of remembrance for the victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine.
In 2016, the German parliament approved by a large majority a joint motion by the Union, SPD and Greens, in which the killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was classified as genocide.
The recognition of the Armenian genocide was preceded by violent protests by the government in Ankara.
In May 2021, the German government officially recognized the German crimes committed during the colonial period in Namibia against the Herero and Nama ethnic groups there as genocide - 113 years after the massacres were committed.
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