MOSCOW, December 15 — RIA Novosti. The mass famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 is not ethnic cleansing, but a tragedy caused by the actions of the Soviet authorities related to collectivization, as well as climatic conditions, attempts to say the opposite — the desire to rewrite history — says Vladimir Shapovalov, deputy director of the Institute of History and Politics Moscow State Pedagogical University.
Holodomor is a tragedy of the Soviet people, a tragedy that covered a huge territory — the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, RSFSR, Kazakhstan and several other adjacent territories. On the territory of these republics, people died — mostly peasants, but not only. This is not some kind of sabotage or a special policy of ethnic cleansing,» said the expert at the roundtable «Referendum, putsch and Forest: how the communists destroyed the Soviet Union», which took place in the press center of the international media group «Russia Today».
He added that the mass famine was a tragedy caused by «climatic conditions» and to a greater extent «actions of the Soviet authorities related to collectivization.»
