The Tragic Fate of Ethnic Germans and Mennonites of Ukraine during the Holodomor of 1932–1933, Assistance to the Starving from Foreign Charitable Organizations

The proposed publication is dedicated to one of the most interesting, complex, important and extremely dramatic problems in the history of the peoples of Ukraine - the Holodomor of 1932-1933. The article reveals the prerequisites, causes and tragic consequences of the events associated with the Holodomor in Ukraine in the 1930s. It is noted that the Holodomor was the result of the social, economic and, first of all, agrarian policy of the Soviet government and the main directions of its implementation - the policy of collectivization, the strict introduction of grain procurement, the dispossession of peasants and social pressure on the Ukrainian peasantry. Tens of thousands of citizens of Europe, the USA, Canada and other countries of the world tried to help those who were dying of hunger as a result of the criminal actions of the Stalinist regime. To organize assistance to the starving in the USSR (as during the famine of 1921-1923), numerous state and public charitable organizations began to emerge. The charitable activities of foreign public and religious organizations in providing assistance to the starving in Ukraine and the opposition of the authorities to these measures of the foreign public are shown. The author emphasizes that famine, Holodomor, terror by hunger, the death of millions of people became the common tragic fate of Ukrainian society, Ukrainians, Germans, Mennonites, Swedes, Poles, Jews, Russians, doomed to torture under the conditions of Stalin’s totalitarian regime.