You're reading: Education Minister: 1931-1933 famine was not genocide

The famine of 1932-1933 was not genocide against the Ukrainian people, Education and Science Minister of Ukraine Dmytro Tabachnyk has said.

"The dying out of the Ukrainian village, Russian, Moldovan ones and so on means the famine took place, but to my mind, it had the character of political destruction of peasantry and [the character of] social system, it was not of an ethnic character," the minister said during a phone-in session in Kyiv on Tuesday.

According to Tabachnyk, "to some extent the famine of 1931-1933 and [the one] in 1946-1947 were artificial [and] due to improper management decisions."