This article examines the international context of relief efforts for the starving population of Ukraine, framed by the Soviet, German and Polish triangle of the early 1930s. The policy of European states was to remain silent or even deny the catastrophic famine for a variety of motives, but maintaining good relations with the Soviet Union was a constant. An examination of Soviet political and military strategy is critical to understanding Stalin’s goals during the Great Famine. By 1932–33 the Kremlin’s position in the international arena was considerably stronger than it had been in the first decade of the USSR, and it was at this time Stalin decided to turn Ukraine into a veritable fortress and model Soviet republic. The aim of Stalin’s policy was to divide European countries and prepare for war by undermining decisions of the Paris Peace Conference and the development of the Red Army. The price of a potential Soviet-Polish alliance was high: Poland would refrain from expressing interest in “internal matters of the USSR.” Thus Poland remained silent about the Holodomor and did not support relief efforts. Assistance that did take place was on a like-to-like principle—Germans to Germans in the USSR, Mennonites to Mennonites, Quakers helping Quakers, Jews helping Jews. This assistance became a pretext for repressive measures against national groups once the Kremlin declared that assistance itself constituted evidence of counterrevolutionary and espionage activity. Ukrainian relief efforts were pursued by Galician organizations and, on the international level, the Interdenominational and Interethnic Committee to Help the Starving in the USSR, initiated by Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna together with Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and the chief rabbi of Vienna, David Feuchtwang.
Czech et al. (Thu,) studied this question.