Ukrainian president seeks support for bill declaring Soviet-era famine genocide
President Viktor Yushchenko appealed to lawmakers to support legislation declaring the Soviet-era famine that killed up to 10 million people in Ukraine as genocide, a move that Russia has strongly opposed.
Moscow has argued that the 1932-33 famine was part of Communist Party repressions that also targeted other ethnic groups in the former Soviet Union, and that it is wrong to single out the Ukrainian people and call it a genocide against them.
The Great Famine, as the event is known by Ukrainians, was started by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin when he ordered the government to seize crops as part of a campaign to force Ukrainian peasants to join collective farms.
"We aren't accusing any people, any country or anyone in Ukraine of genocide," Yushchenko said in his letter to the 450-member parliament. "That is not the aim of this bill. The author of this evil act was Stalin's regime."
No vote has been scheduled on the bill.
The issue remains highly charged in the former Soviet republic because calling it genocide would amount to an indictment of Soviet policies -- something some Communists and many pro-Russian politicians oppose. Russia, as the successor state of the Soviet Union, has also been reluctant to look too deeply into Communist-era crimes.
Ten countries have already recognized the famine as genocide, including the United States, Canada and Austria.
Yushchenko noted that all three presidents since Ukraine's 1991 independence from the Soviet Union have supported the effort, and he said opinion polls show most Ukrainians support such a pronouncement.
"Ukrainians have to find in themselves the courage to recognize this and convince others that our nation became the victim of a horrible evil -- the evil of genocide that can never be allowed to happen again," Yushchenko said.