MOSCOW

Ukraine's parliament speaker said on Saturday that he would ask his counterparts from around the world to recognize the Holodomor tragedy of 1932-1933 as a "genocide of Ukrainian people" in the Soviet Union.

Recognizing the Holodomor is "fundamentally important for the creation and development of the Ukrainian state," Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of the unicameral Verkhovna Rada told Ukrainian ambassadors at an annual conference, adding that he would make the request in January.

"I think that the entire Ukrainian people will be sincerely grateful if our ambassadors in all countries contribute to the adoption of appropriate decisions by governments and parliaments of the world," Stefanchuk stressed.

The Holodomor is considered one of the most painful events in the history of Ukraine.

At least 3.9 million people starved to death between 1932 and 1933 as a result of Stalin's policies and "collectivization" of agriculture, according to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.

The Soviet Union implemented the collectivization of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 to integrate individual landholdings and labor into collectively controlled and state-controlled farms. It affected a significant part of the west and south of the Soviet Union.

Estimates conclude that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died of famine across the USSR.

Ukraine claims that the famine in its territory was "intentional" and has called it a "genocide of the Ukrainian people."