Today, November 27, Ukraine honors the victims of the Holodomor. The Holodomor Remembrance Day is commemorated annually on the fourth Saturday in November.
The Holodomor Remembrance Day was established by presidential decree in 1998. In 2006 the Holodomor of 1932-1933 was recognized as genocide by the Law of Ukraine.
In the 20th century, Ukrainians survived three mass famines: 1921-1923, 1932-1933 and the Famine of 1946-1947. The most extensive was the Holodomor of 1932-1933 which was the genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet authorities.
The planned confiscation of the grain harvest and all other foodstuffs from the people by representatives of the Soviet authorities during the Holodomor of 1932-1933 directly resulted in the starvation of millions of people, while the Soviet authorities had substantial grain reserves and exported grain abroad during the Holodomor.
Despite the fact that the criminal actions of Stalin’s officials that resulted in the starvation of people were qualified as murder under the norms of Soviet criminal law of the time, the reasons for this mass crime were never investigated in the USSR and no one involved in the crime was punished at the time.
For decades, the mass murder of people by artificial starvation was not only deliberately suppressed by the Soviet authorities, but it was forbidden to be mentioned anywhere.
According to the International Association of Holodomor Genocide Researchers of 1932-1933, 10.5 million Ukrainians died of starvation.
The regions that suffered the most were the Poltava, Sumy, Kharkiv, Cherkasy, Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions. These regions suffered 52,8% of deaths.
Today, at 16:00, national flags will be lowered throughout Ukraine. A nationwide minute of silence will also be held at 16:00.