For the past few months, History has been settling in the Bundestag. On Wednesday, November 30, members of the Bundestag approved a resolution recognizing as genocide the great famine of the 1930s in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor. In this, Germany is following the example of some fifteen states around the world, including Ireland, Moldova and Romania, whose parliaments passed resolutions to this effect last week. Also for the first time, Pope Francis used the term “genocide” over the Holodomor last week and drew a comparison with “the martyrdom of aggression” of Ukraine by Russia since February 24 . The calendar lends itself to it. On 24th November last, kyiv commemorated this great famine – of which it is the 90th anniversary – which caused more than 4 million deaths and which was the consequence of the policy of collectivization of the country by Stalin’s Soviet regime.
In Germany last night, the text almost achieved consensus, adopted by four of the six parties represented in the Bundestag and in the presence of the new Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin, Oleksii Makeiev. The resolution considers that this great famine must “join the list of inhuman crimes committed by totalitarian systems, during which millions of human lives have been destroyed in Europe”. He also judges that “the whole of Ukraine has been affected by hunger and repression” and “not only its grain-producing regions”. “With forced collectivization, the Soviet leadership tried to control and repress the peasants as well as the Ukrainian way of life, language and culture.” A “political crime” which aimed at the “political suppression of the Ukrainian national consciousness” and which thus enters into the “historical-political classification of the genocide from the current point of view” adds the resolution by calling on the authorities to support research on a pan of History “little known in Germany and Europe”.
Parallel with the news
Asked by the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Robin Wagener, initiator of this text and chairman of the German-Ukrainian parliamentary group in the Bundestag, also draws a clear parallel with current events. “Putin is part of the cruel and criminal tradition of Stalin,” he said. “Today Ukraine is once more struck by Russian terror. Once once more, violence and terror are aimed at depriving Ukraine of its means of subsistence and at subjugating the entire country”, judges this deputy for whom the political qualification of the Holodomor as genocide is a “signal of Warning”. A message that he reiterated from the rostrum of the Bundestag, calling on the German government to continue its aid to kyiv. “It is our duty to stop this madness” he launched into the hemicycle.
For historian Jan Claas Berhends of the University of Potsdam, “Ukraine had been pushing for several years” for Germany to take this step. “That this recognition comes now, in the middle of the war in Ukraine, is the signal of symbolic support. It is also a novelty because, until now, Germany was very busy with its own crimes,” he admits.
Holocaust denial law
What will this resolution mean in practice for those who, like many historians in Russia, do not call this great famine a genocide? Could such remarks made in Germany be punishable? The question has arisen since the upper house of the German parliament, the Bundesrat, last week confirmed the expansion of the Holocaust denial law. If until now only denial of the Holocaust was punishable by prison terms, now “public approval, denial or gross trivialization of genocide, crimes once morest humanity and war crimes” are punishable if these remarks are made with the aim of “stirring up hatred once morest a certain population group and disturbing the public peace”.
While many voices believe that this law will reduce freedom of expression, historian Jan Claas Berhends does not expect any concrete effect on the work of historians but criticizes this kind of memorial laws on principle: “Unfortunately, they are multiplying in Germany and Europe because they are easy for politicians to do and have a symbolic effect, he notes. On the other hand, I do not think that the mission of parliaments is to decide on history.”