Kiev - Ukraine's decision to honour millions of people who died of famine in the 1930s has drawn cries of historical revisionism from Russia, which disputes claims that the Stalin-era government targeted Ukrainians with policies that allowed the famine.

Historians generally agree that the famine was a side effect of a campaign by dictator Josef Stalin's communists against rich farmers in the former Soviet Union.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko called on Russia to finally acknowledge and "clearly condemn" the death of millions from hunger in 1932 and 1933 during a ceremony on Saturday, reported the Interfax news agency.

But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who declined an invitation to the ceremony, said Yushchenko is engaged in historical revisionism in an attempt to perpetuate hatred between Russia and Ukraine. Yushchenko disputed Medvedev's claims.

"The hunger was focused and organized," said Yushchenko, calling the famine one of the "world's worst humanitarian catastrophes" and a "genocide." However, he did not lay blame for the famine on any one particular country.

But Russia rejects the classification of the famine as genocide.

In a letter to Yushchenko, Medvedev wrote: "The famine in 1932 and 1933 was not focused on the destruction of one people." He noted that Russians, Belarussians and Kazakhs also suffered. The famine, known in Russian as the Golodomor, is considered one of the worst crimes of Josef Stalin's regime.

Russia argues that the famine was a Stalinist crime against the people of the Soviet Union. The argument that Russians killed their "Ukrainian brothers" is wrong, said Vladimir Lukin, Russia's commissioner for human rights. He called Saturday's ceremony a "distortion of the facts."

Memorial, a Russian human rights organization, also criticized the use of the word "genocide" to describe the famine.

"It's completely proper to memorialize the famine, but from a legal perspective, it was more of a crime against humanity," Arseni Roginski told Interfax.

Russia and Ukraine have had increasingly poor relations since the Yushchenko took office on a platform of reducing ties to Russia and forming stronger ties to the West. (dpa)