SOVIET DENIALS

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 547.

TEXT B

I. Answer the following questions

1. What newspapers in the West gave the early reports of famine the attention they deserved?

2. What refuses were made for foreign journalists?

3. Was the Genocide Famine an instrument of national policy?

4. Could the Soviet Government have averted the Genocide Famine?

5. What did say Molotov when he was asked about The Famine in Ukraine in 1986?

6. What statements were issued by Soviet Embassy officials in North America in 1983?

The Soviet Union never openly acknowledged the Genocide Famine in Ukraine.

During an interview in 1986, Viacheslav Molotov, one-time foreign minister of the Soviet Union, was asked about the Genocide Famine.

Q-"Among writers, some say the (genocide) famine of 1933 was deliberately organized by Stalin and the whole of your leadership."

A- "Enemies of communism say that! They are the enemies of communism! People who are not politically aware, who are politically blind... I twice travelled to the Ukraine ... Of course I saw nothing of the kind there. Those allegations are absurd. Absurd!”

In 1983, the year Ukrainians commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Genocide Famine, the following statements were issued by Soviet Embassy officials in North America:

"The representative of the United States had repeated fabrications about an alleged (genocide) famine which was supposed to have occurred in the Ukrainian SSR fifty years previously. In that connection we wish to ... point out that the slander has been perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalist bourgeoisie ... They later moved to the United States and, in order to justify their presence in that country, had circulated the lie about the famine."

"Recent stories in the Western news media try to create an impression that there was an artificially created famine in the Ukraine in 1932-33 because Ukrainian farmers, allegedly, resisted collective farming.

Indeed the situation in Ukraine as well as in other parts of the USSR in 1932 was quite difficult. Yet it was not as critical as portrayed in the West. And, of course, it was not because somebody wanted to make it bad, but because of a number of reasons, drought being the major one."