Tags
Communism, Deaths due to Communism, Holodomor, Joseph Stalin, poem, poetry, Radical socialism, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, The Kulaks, The Ukraine, Totalitarianism, Ukrainian famine, Ukrainian genocide, Ukriane, USSR
Holodomor
In the Ukraine the Kulaks tilled the soil
To grow the grain to make the daily bread.
Was by their enterprise and by their toil,
That all who lived in the Ukraine were fed.
But now their neighbour Russia burned bright red,
And Stalin said: “The Kulaks all must die!
For by their class our enemies are led –
And our collectivism they defy.
Without them there will be no wheat or rye.
The fields where grain once grew will then be bare,
And in their millions will the dead there lie.”
So for the vanished Kulaks say a prayer.
Think for a moment of their pain and fear;
And don’t think it could never happen here.
dnobrienpoetry 
Your sonnets flow so easily, Dennis!
(And yes, without vigilance that could happen elsewhere…. I fear for the whole world these days.)
Thanks Betty. Sonnets are interesting puzzles. It’s fun to try condensing a story or an idea into those 14 lines.
Not sure why we compare all the bad ones to Hitler when Stalin was worse. When researching abortion to write my book, I ran across the fact that the New York Times ran a glowing article in the 30’s about Stalin and Communism and left out what he did to the Ukraine. I think the article won a Pulitzer Prize. It was years later, like 40 or 50, before the NYT acknowledged their bias in the piece. Liberals here think papers like that and the rest of the liberal media are wonderful sources of news and run down Fox as biased. But this story and others about the NYT show they aren’t. 😦
And FDR recognized the USSR while this was happening in 1933.