Kyiv under conditions of genocide 1932-1933
Authors: Petrenko Ivan 
Published: November 2024

The author examines the life of Kyiv under the conditions of committing the crime of genocide against Ukrainians in 1931–1933 by the communist totalitarian regime, based on archival documents and testimonies of witnesses. Forcing industrialization and the crisis of grain procurement of the late 1920s inspired Stalin and his associates to implement radical socio-economic transformation in the agricultural sector in the communist spirit. The goal was to destroy the market and private agricultural producers by trapping peasant owners in collective farms (artels, communes) controlled by the communist state. The policy of collectivization, “dekulakization”, grain harvesting loads and taxes resulted in impoverishment anddestruction of peasant individual farming. The increase in peasant of farmers’ migration to cities and working villages, which was observed since that time, with the intention of preventing of collective farm slavery, poverty and finding a job at one of the industrial facilities that were already functioning or being built during the implementation of the first five-year plan. This process has gained momentum with the first outbreaks of famine in different regions of Soviet Ukraine at the end of 1931 – in early 1932, which were the result of an exorbitant grain procurement campaign of 1931/32. The escape of peasants to cities peaked in 1932–1933 when the Stalin regime orchestrated the genocidal destruction of part of the Ukrainian nation through artificial famine. Kyiv, as a regional center, was no exception. Ukrainian peasants, often entire families primarily from the Kyiv suburban strip and the region, employed various means to reach the city, such as walking, using railways, or river transport like steamboats along the Dnipro. In December 1932, the communist regime eventually introduced passports, in order to deprive peasants of the opportunity to buy tickets and freely travel outside their settlements, by denying the peasants’ right to have relevant personal documents. In an effort to prevent numerous masses of peasants from entering the city, the Communist Party authorities put up police outposts at the entrances to Kyiv, not to release peasants outside the railway station, etc. Nevertheless, despite the power obstacles, many people managed to break through to the heart of the city through the numerous borders of the security forces. Those who were lucky sought to get to the city’s market places in order to exchange their valuables and various belongings for food. They also sought refuge and alms near Kyiv churches that had not yet been destroyed or closed by the communist regime. At the same time, long lines lined up for bread to Kyiv shops, formed from Kyiv residents and fugitives from the countryside. The fugitives especially strived to get to the Torgsyns, which had a large assortment of various food products and let them for currency, gold and other jewels. Due to prolonged starvation and extreme exhaustion, hundreds of people were dying on the streets of Kyiv. Every day, their bodies (and often half-alive ones) were being picked up by representatives of the city’s communal services and taken to mass graves on the outskirts of the city, numerous Kyiv cemeteries, tracts, etc. The high mortality of the adult population has caused a rapid increase in child homelessness, which perceptidly affected Kyiv in the years of the Holodomor-genocide in particular. Thousands of children, willing to seek food, begged on the streets of Kyiv, near churches, markets, and bread shops. Many of them were taken to city orphanages and quarantine collectors, where there were no living conditions. Therefore, a large part of the children were dying of hunger, exhaustion and associated diseases. Along with the peasants, various categories of the urban population, including Kyiv one, suffered from systematic malnutrition and even hunger. Since the end of the 1920s, because of food supply crisis and the regime’s desire to introduce a communist system of food procurement and distribution of supplies, a card system for bread, and later for the rest of the basic foodstuffs, operated in the cities. It could not satisfy normal food needs, was extended only to certain categories of citizens and was operated with significant interruptions and defects. Thus, numerous groups of people actually ended up on the limit of starving survival. This was especially felt by Kyiv workers, students, representatives of the creative intelligence, etc. There were frequent cases when workers died at their workplaces from prolonged starvation, while the Soviet state had in its reserves bread forcibly taken from the peasants. At the same time, on the background of starvation, mass deaths, and unsanitary conditions, a significant outbreak of infectious diseases had been observed in Kyiv during 1932–1933. They were also the reason of the rapid increase in mortality. Keywords: Kyiv, Holodomor, famine, communist regime, genocide, peasants.