Ukraine`s President Viktor Yushchenko said Wednesday that a Soviet-era famine suffered in his country was an act of genocide -- two days after Russian President Dimitry Medvedev accused him of expoiting history for poltical purposes.

`My generation has to pass the truth on to your generation about the famine and you should pass it on to your children,` he said in a meeting with schoolchildren in Kharkiv, a region which was among the worst affected by the incident.

This famine had been `artificially` organised by (Soviet ruler Joseph) Stalin to exterminate Ukrainian citizens, fearing their revolt,` the president said.

`Stalin feared Ukrainian people as they were the most independent class, who pass from generation to generation their dream of a free and independent Ukraine,` he added.

Several heads of state and government are expected to attend 76th anniversary ceremony.

In 1932, the Soviet authorities launched a campaign to collectivise agriculture leading people to starve.

Ukraine has been lobbying the United Nations for years to have the event recognised as an act of `genocide` against the Ukrainian people.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has accused Ukraine of distorting the facts about a Soviet-era famine for `opportunistic` reasons.

Such efforts are based on `manipulations and distortions, falsification of facts about the number of dead,` Medvedev said in a letter to the Ukrainian president posted on the Kremlin website last Friday.

Medvedev argued that millions of people also starved to death in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

`These efforts are more likely aimed at the maximum estrangement of our peoples, united by many centuries of history,` he wrote.

The European Parliament passed a motion October 23 calling the famine `a crime against the Ukrainian people and against humanity,` although avoiding any reference to genocide.

In 2006, the parliament of the ex-Soviet republic approved a bill recognising the famine as genocide despite opposition from pro-Russian lawmakers.

Many Ukrainian historians say the famine, which killed between four and 10 million people by different estimates, was intentionally provoked by Soviet rulers to crush an independence movement in Ukraine, but others dispute this.