Hi my name is Christine
Hawryluk and I am here to pitch an idea for a podcast about an emotional and
inhumane historical event to the podcast show Stuff You Missed in History
Class. Before I begin, I have a question for you to simply think about: Have you
ever thought if it is possible for people in a country to be killed very slowly
at the rate of 30,000 people a day and nearly a third of them being
children? Not many of you may have heard
of this event, but this is why I am here today, to inform you about the
Holodomor. This was a brutal, man-made famine caused by Joseph Stalin from 1932
to 1933 on Soviet Ukraine. What makes this event most devastating is that
Stalin took away something that people here in Canada take for granted—grain,
which was Ukraine’s primary food source. My goal is to examine how Stalin’s
removal of grain affected the people of Ukraine. To be informed about how
millions of Ukrainians died in the most cruel and brutal way possible, by
starvation, is something that would be an eye-opener for many. Food is
something that millions of people around the world take for granted, but these
Ukrainians had nothing to live off of. This is why it is important! This is why
people should know about it. This event is not like WWI or 9/11 where people
were killed instantly by some military machine. This event is different from
others because Stalin’s motives were inhumane by choosing a method that takes
much, much longer to kill a person, rather than shooting them and dying
instantly. To see images of people deteriorating slowly after having no food or
nothing to drink for weeks and weeks, and seeing them barely crawling on the
ground is an image that will never leave someone’s mind. The most interesting aspect of this large
event is to see how Stalin’s removal of grain affected the Ukrainians: to see
Stalin’s goals, how exactly these goals were accomplished, the effect these
goals had on the population of Ukraine and the final result. To see this
timeline of events would make those two years seem much shorter. This issue of
how Ukrainians were treated very poorly by the Russians can still be seen today
with what is happening in Ukraine this very moment—showing that the Russians
never give up, that all they want is power over Ukraine! The mercilessness of
the Russians can be seen in Stalin’s implementation of his goals on the
Ukrainians where he doesn’t care who gets hurt. In my eyes, the Holodomor is
considered “the lost famine,” since not many people know about it, but I am
going to change that!
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