Holodomor denial () is the claim that the Holodomor, a 1932–33 man-made famine that killed millions in Soviet Ukraine, did not occur, or (especially since evidence of its existence became public in the 1980s) the diminishment of its scale and significance. Negationism of the Holodomor is distinct from the argument that it did not constitute a genocide, a claim which has been put forward by many prominent historians of the famine, such as Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Michael Ellman, and Hiroaki Kuromiya. Officially, the government of the Soviet Union denied the occurrence of the famine and it also suppressed information about the famine from the very beginning of it until the 1980s. The Soviet government's denial of the occurrence of the famine was also circulated by some Western journalists and intellectuals. It was echoed at the time of the famine by some prominent Western journalists, including The New York Times Walter Duranty. Holodomor denial is a form of historical negationism, and as such, it is subject to legal punishment in many countries. Soviet Union Cover-up of the famine Soviet head-of-state Mikhail Kalinin responded to Western offers of food by telling of "political cheats who offer to help the starving Ukraine," and commented, "Only the most decadent classes are capable of producing such cynical elements." In an interview with Gareth Jones in March 1933, Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov stated, "Well, there is no famine", and went on to say: "You must take a longer view. The present hunger is temporary. In writing books you must have a longer view. It would be difficult to describe it as hunger." On instructions from Litvinov, Boris Skvirsky, embassy counselor of the recently opened Soviet Embassy in the United States, published a letter on 3 January 1934, in response to a pamphlet about the famine. In his letter, Skvirsky stated that the idea that the Soviet government was "deliberately killing the population of Ukraine" "wholly grotesque." He claimed that the Ukrainian population had been increasing at an annual rate of 2 percent during the preceding five years and asserted that the death rate in Ukraine "was the lowest of that of any of the constituent republics composing the Soviet Union", concluding that it "was about 35 percent lower than the pre-war death rate of tsarist days." Mention of the famine was criminalized, punishable with a five-year term in the Gulag labor camps. Blaming the authorities