Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, and his wife Kateryna during a commemoration ceremony for victims of the Great Famine in Kiev

Ukraine’s parliament adopted a law recognising a 1932-1933 famine that killed up to 10 million people as a Soviet “genocide” against the Ukrainian people.

A total 233 parliamentarians — seven more than the required minimum of 226 — voted in favour of the legislation put forward by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

“The president considers the adoption of this law to be a historic act which shows parliament paying its debts, debts of memory and respect for the generations” which suffered the famine, presidential spokesman Ivan Vassyunyk said, according to the Interfax news agency.

In 1932, Soviet authorities launched a campaign of forced collectivisation in the countryside, seizing cattle, seed, flour and crops, driving many farmers to starvation, notably in Ukraine.

Many historians say the famine, which killed between four and 10 million people according to different estimates, was intentionally provoked by Soviet authorities in order to crush a pro-independence movement in Ukraine.

Parties allied to Yushchenko during the 2005 “Orange Revolution” election which swept him to power joined the president’s Our Ukraine party in backing the bill, which was opposed by pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s Regions Party and the Communists.

Opponents of the bill dispute the claim that the famine resembled genocide and say it risks harming relations with Russia.

Ukraine’s parliamentarians “have ignored the fact that the victims of the famine and Stalin’s other repressions were the entire Soviet people, irrespective of nationality,” said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the Russian parliament’s foreign relations comittee, ITAR-TASS reported.

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