Holodomor

TheHolodomor,also known as theUkrainian Famine,was a massfamineinSoviet Ukrainefrom 1932 to 1933 that killed millions ofUkrainians. The Holodomor was part of the widerSoviet famine of 1930–1933which affected the majorgrain-producingareas of theSoviet Union.
While most scholars are in consensus that the maincause of the faminewas largely man-made, it remains in dispute whether the Holodomor was intentional and whether it was directed at Ukrainians and whether it constitutes agenocide, the point of contention being the absence of attested documents explicitly ordering the starvation of any area in the Soviet Union. Some historians conclude that the famine was deliberately engineered byJoseph Stalinto eliminate aUkrainian independencemovement. Others suggest that the famine was primarily the consequence of rapidSoviet industrialisationandcollectivizationof agriculture. A middle position is that the initial causes of the famine were an unintentional byproduct of the process of collectivization but once it set in, starvation was selectively weaponized and the famine was "instrumentalized" and amplified against Ukrainians as a means to punish Ukrainians for resisting Soviet policies and to suppress theirnationalist sentiments.
Ukraine was one of the largest grain-producing states in the USSR and was subject to unreasonably high grain quotas compared to the rest of the USSR in 1930.This caused Ukraine to be hit particularly hard by the famine. Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials vary greatly. A joint statement to theUnited Nationssigned by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7 to 10 million people died.More recent scholarship has estimated a lower range of between 3.5 to 5 million victims.The famine's widespread impact on Ukraine persists to this day.
Public discussion of the famine was banned in the Soviet Union until theglasnostperiod initiated byMikhail Gorbachevin the 1980s.Since 2006, the Holodomor hasbeen recognizedbyUkraineand 33 other UN member states, theEuropean Parliament, and 35 of the 50statesof theUnited Statesas a genocide against the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government. In 2008, the RussianState Dumacondemned the Soviet regime "that has neglected the lives of people for the achievement of economic and political goals".
Holodomorliterally translated fromUkrainianmeans "death by hunger", "killing by hunger, killing by starvation",or sometimes "murder by hunger or starvation."It is acompoundof the Ukrainianholod, 'hunger', andmor, 'plague'. The expressionholodom morytymeans "to inflict death by hunger." The Ukrainian verbmoryty(морити) means "to poison, to drive to exhaustion, or to torment." Theperfectiveform ofmorytyiszamoryty, 'kill or drive to death'.In English, the Holodomor has also been referred to as theartificial famine,terror-genocideand thegreat famine.
It was used in print in the 1930s in Ukrainian diaspora publications inCzechoslovakiaasHaladamor,and by Ukrainian immigrant organisations in the United States and Canada by 1978;in theSoviet Union, of which Ukraine was aconstituent republic, any references to the famine were dismissed asanti-Soviet propaganda, even afterde-Stalinizationin 1956, until the declassification and publication of historical documents in the late 1980s made continued denial of the catastrophe unsustainable.
Discussion of the Holodomor became possible as part of the Sovietglasnost("openness") policy in the 1980s. In Ukraine, the first official use offaminewas in a December 1987 speech byVolodymyr Shcherbytskyi,First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, on the occasion of the republic's 70th anniversary.Another early public usage in the Soviet Union was in a February 1988 speech by Oleksiy Musiyenko, Deputy Secretary for ideological matters of the party organisation of the Kyiv branch of theUnion of Soviet Writersin Ukraine.
The termholodomormay have first appeared in print in the Soviet Union on 18 July 1988, when Musiyenko's article on the topic was published.Holodomoris now an entry in the modern, two-volume dictionary of the Ukrainian language, published in 2004, described as "artificial hunger, organised on a vast scale by a criminalregimeagainst a country's population."
According to Elazar Barkan, Elizabeth A. Cole, and Kai Struve, the Holodomor has been described as a "Ukrainian Holocaust". They assert that since the 1990s the termHolodomorhas been widely adopted byanti-communistsin order to draw parallels tothe Holocaust. However this term has been criticized by some academics,as the Holocaust was a heavily documented, coordinated effort byNazi Germanyand its collaborators to eliminate certain ethnic groups such as Jews. By contrast, there is no definitive documentation that Stalin directly ordered the mass murder of Ukrainians.Barkan et al. state that the termHolodomorwas "introduced and popularized by the Ukrainian diaspora in North America before Ukraine became independent" and that the term 'Holocaust' in reference to the famine "is not explained at all."
The famine affected the Ukrainian SSR as well as theMoldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic(a part of theUkrainian SSRat the time) in spring 1932,and from February to July 1933,with the most victims recorded in spring 1933. The consequences are evident in demographic statistics: between 1926 and 1939, theUkrainian populationincreased by only 6.6%, whereas Russia and Belarus grew by 16.9% and 11.7% respectively.The number ofUkrainians as ethnicitydecreased by 10%.
From the 1932 harvest, Soviet authorities were able to procure only 4.3 million tons of grain, as compared with 7.2 million tons obtained from the 1931 harvest.Rations in towns were drastically cut back, and in winter 1932–1933 and spring 1933, people in many urban areas starved.Urban workers were supplied by arationingsystem and therefore could occasionally assist their starving relatives in the countryside, but rations were gradually cut. By spring 1933, urban residents also faced starvation. It is estimated 70% to 80% of all famine deaths during the Holodomor in eight analyzed Oblasts in the Soviet Union occurred in the first seven months of 1933.
The first reports of massmalnutritionand deaths from starvation emerged from two urban areas of the city ofUman, reported in January 1933 byVinnytsiaandKyivoblasts. By mid-January 1933, there were reports about mass "difficulties" with food in urban areas, which had been undersupplied through the rationing system, and deaths from starvation among people who were refused rations, according to the December 1932 decree of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party. By the beginning of February 1933, according to reports from local authorities and UkrainianGPU(secret police), the most affected area wasDnipropetrovsk Oblast, which also suffered from epidemics oftyphusandmalaria.Odesaand Kyiv oblasts were second and third respectively. By mid-March, most of the reports of starvation originated from Kyiv Oblast.
By mid-April 1933,Kharkiv Oblastreached the top of the most affected list, while Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Vinnytsia, andDonetskoblasts, and Moldavian SSR were next on the list. Reports about mass deaths from starvation, dated mid-May through the beginning of June 1933, originated fromraionsin Kyiv and Kharkiv oblasts. The "less affected" list notedChernihiv Oblastand northern parts of Kyiv and Vinnytsia oblasts. The Central Committee of the CP(b) of Ukraine Decree of 8 February 1933 said no hunger cases should have remained untreated.The Ukrainian Weekly, which was tracking the situation in 1933, reported the difficulties in communications and the appalling situation in Ukraine.
Local authorities had to submit reports about the numbers suffering from hunger, the reasons for hunger, number of deaths from hunger, food aid provided from local sources, and centrally provided food aid required. The GPU managed parallel reporting and food assistance in the Ukrainian SSR. Many regional reports and most of the central summary reports are available from present-day central and regional Ukrainian archives.
Olga Andriewsky writes that scholars are in consensus that thecause of the faminewas man-made.The term "man-made" is, however, questioned by historians such asR. W. DaviesandStephen Wheatcroft, according to whom those who use this term "underestimate the role of... natural causes",though they agree that the Holodomor was largely a result of Stalin's economic policies. Among contemporary historians it is debated whether the famine was an intended result of such policies,whether the Holodomor was directed at Ukrainians, and whether it constitutes agenocide, the point of contention being the absence of attested documents explicitly ordering the starvation of any area in the Soviet Union.Some historians conclude that the famine was deliberately engineered byJoseph Stalinto eliminate aUkrainian independencemovement.Others suggest that the famine was primarily the consequence of rapidSoviet industrialisationandcollectivizationof agriculture. A middle position, held for example by historian Andrea Graziosi, is that the initial causes of the famine were an unintentional byproduct of the process of collectivization but once it set in, starvation was selectively weaponized and the famine was "instrumentalized" and amplified against Ukrainians as a means to punish Ukrainians for resisting Soviet policies and to suppress theirnationalist sentiments.
Some scholars suggest that the famine was a consequence of human-made and natural factors.The most prevalent man-made factor was changes made to agriculture because of rapidindustrialisationduring theFirst Five Year Plan.There are also those who blame a systematic set of policies perpetrated by the Soviet government underStalindesigned to exterminate the Ukrainians.
According to historianStephen G. Wheatcroft, the grain yield for the Soviet Union preceding the famine was a low harvest of between 55 and 60 million tons,likely in part caused by damp weather and low traction power,yet official statistics mistakenly reported a yield of 68.9 million tons.(Note that a single ton of grain is enough to feed three people for one year.)Historian Mark Tauger has suggested that drought and damp weather were causes of the low harvest.Mark Tauger suggested that heavy rains would help the harvest while Stephen Wheatcroft suggested it would hurt it which Natalya Naumenko notes as a disagreement in scholarship.Another factor which reduced the harvest suggested by Tauger included endemic plant rust.However, in regard to plant disease Stephen Wheatcroft notes that the Soviet extension of sown area combined with lack of crop rotation may have exacerbated the problem,which Tauger also acknowledges in regard to the latter.
Due to factional struggles withBukharinwing of the party, peasant resistance to theNEPunderLenin, and the need for industrialization,Joseph Stalindeclared a need to extract a "tribute" or "tax" from the peasantry.This idea was supported by most of the party in the 1920s.The tribute collected by the party took on the form of a virtual war against the peasantry that would lead to itscultural destructionand the relegating of the countryside to essentially acolonyhomogenized to the urban culture of the Soviet elite.Leon Trotsky, however, opposed the policy of forced collectivisation under Stalin and would have favoured avoluntary, gradual approach towardscollective farmingwith greater tolerance for the rights of Soviet Ukrainians.This campaign of "colonizing" the peasantry had its roots both in oldRussian Imperialismand modernsocial engineeringof thenation stateyet with key differences to the latter such as Soviet repression reflecting more the weakness of said state rather than its strength.
In this vein by the summer of 1930, the government instituted a program of food requisitioning, ostensibly to increase grain exports. According to Natalya Naumenko,collectivization in the Soviet Unionand lack of favored industries were primary contributors to famine mortality (52% of excess deaths), and some evidence shows there was discrimination against ethnic Ukrainians and Germans. In Ukrainecollectivisation policywas enforced, entailing extreme crisis and contributing to the famine. In 1929–1930, peasants were induced to transfer land and livestock to state-owned farms, on which they would work as day-labourers for payment in kind.
Food exports continued during the famine, albeit at a reduced rate.In regard to exports,Michael Ellmanstates that the 1932–1933 grain exports amounted to 1.8 million tonnes, which would have been enough to feed 5 million people for one year.The collectivization and high procurement quota explanation for the famine is somewhat called into question by the fact that the oblasts of Ukraine with the highest losses wereKyivandKharkiv, which produced far lower amounts of grain than other sections of the country.HistorianStephen G. Wheatcroftlists four problems Soviet authorities ignored during collectivization that would hinder the advancement of agricultural technology and ultimately contributed to the famine:
Mark Tauger notes that Soviet and Western specialist at the time noted draught power shortages and lack of crop rotation contributed to intense weed infestations,with these both being also factors Stephen Wheatcroft lists as contributing to the famine. Natalya Naumenko calculated that reduced agriculture production in "collectivized" collective farms is responsible for up to 52% of Holodomorexcess deaths.
It has been proposed that the Soviet leadership used the human-made famine to attackUkrainian nationalism, and thus it could fall under the legal definition of genocide.For example, special and particularly lethal policies were adopted in and largely limited to Soviet Ukraine at the end of 1932 and 1933. According toTimothy Snyder, "each of them may seem like ananodyneadministrative measure, and each of them was certainly presented as such at the time, and yet each had to kill."Other sources discuss the famine in relation to a project of imperialism or colonialism of Ukraine by the Soviet state.
According to aCentre for Economic Policy Researchpaper published in 2021 by Andrei Markevich, Natalya Naumenko, and Nancy Qian, regions with higher Ukrainian population shares were struck harder with centrally planned policies corresponding to famine such as increased procurement rate,and Ukrainian populated areas were given lower numbers of tractors which the paper argues demonstrates that ethnic discrimination across the board was centrally planned, ultimately concluding that 92% of famine deaths in Ukraine alone along with 77% of famine deaths in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus combined can be explained by systematic bias against Ukrainians.The paper found from its analysis that "the regime intended to take more grain from Ukrainian areas after conditioning for factors such as production capacity"and noting that "in areas that the Bolshevik regime marked as important for grain production, ethnic Russians replaced ethnic Ukrainians as the largest ethnic group".
Mark Tauger criticized Natalya Naumenko's work as being based on: "major historical inaccuracies and falsehoods, omissions of essential evidence contained in her sources or easily available, and substantial misunderstandings of certain key topics".For example, Naumenko ignored Tauger's findings of 8.94 million tons of the harvest that had been lost to crop "rust and smut",four reductions in grain procurement to Ukraine including a 39.5 million puds reduction in grain procurements ordered by Stalin,and that from Tauger's findings which are contrary to Naumenko's paper's claims the "per-capita grain procurements in Ukraine were less, often significantly less, than the per-capita procurements from the five other main grain-producing regions in the USSR in 1932".
Other scholars argue that in other years preceding the famine this was not the case. For example, Stanislav Kulchytsky claims Ukraine produced more grain in 1930 than theCentral Black Earth Oblast,MiddleandLower VolgaandNorth Caucasusregions all together, which had never been done before, and on average gave 4.7 quintals of grain from every sown hectare to the state—a record-breaking index of marketability—but was unable to fulfill the grain quota for 1930 until May 1931. Ukraine produced a similar amount of grain in 1931; however, by the late spring of 1932 "many districts were left with no reserves of produce or fodder at all".Despite this, according to statistics gathered by Nataliia Levchuk, Ukraine and North Caucasus Krai delivered almost 100% of their grain procurement in 1931 versus 67% in two Russian Oblasts during the same period versus 1932 where three Russian regions delivered almost all of their procurements and Ukraine and North Caucasus did not.This can partially be explained by Ukrainian regions losing a third of their harvests and Russian regions losing by comparison only 15% of their harvest.
Ultimately, Tauger states: "if the regime had not taken even that smaller amount grain from Ukrainian villages, the famine could have been greatly reduced or even eliminated" however (in his words) "if the regime had left that grain in Ukraine, then other parts of the USSR would have been even more deprived of food than they were, including Ukrainian cities and industrial sites, and the overall effect would still have been a major famine, even worse in "non-Ukrainian" regions."In fact in contrast to Naumenko's paper's claims the higher Ukrainian collectivization rates in Tauger's opinion actually indicate a pro-Ukrainian bias in Soviet policies rather than an anti-Ukrainian one: "[Soviet authorities] did not see collectivization as "discrimination" against Ukrainians; they saw it as a reflection of—in the leaders' view—Ukraine's relatively more advanced farming skills that made Ukraine better prepared for collectivization (Davies 1980a, 166, 187–188; Tauger 2006a)."
Naumenko responded to some of Tauger's criticisms in another paper.Naumenko criticizes Tauger's view of the efficacy of collective farms arguing Tauger's view goes against the consensus,she also states that the tenfold difference in death toll between the 1932-1933 Soviet famine and theRussian famine of 1891–1892can only be explained by government policies,and that the infestations of pests and plant disease suggested by Tauger as a cause of the famine must also correspond such infestations to rates of collectivization due to deaths by area corresponding to thisdue Naumenko's findings that: "on average, if you compare two regions with similar pre-famine characteristics, one with zero collectivization rate and another with a 100 percent collectivization rate, the more collectivized region's 1933 mortality rate increases by 58 per thousand relative to its 1927–1928 mortality rate".Naumenko believes the disagreement between her and Tauger is due to a "gulf in training and methods between quantitative fields like political science and economics and qualitative fields like history" noting that Tauger makes no comments on one of her paper's results section.
Tauger made a counter-reply to this reply by Naumenko.Tauger argues in his counter reply that Naumenko's attempt to correspond collectivization rates to famine mortality fails because "there was no single level of collectivization anywhere in the USSR in 1930, especially in the Ukrainian Republic" and that "since collectivization changed significantly by 1932–1933, any connection between 1930 and 1933 omits those changes and is therefore invalid".Tauger also criticizes Naumenko's ignoring of statistics Tauger's presented where "in her reply she completely ignored the quantitative data [Tauger] presented in [his] article" in which she against the evidence "denied that any famines took place in the later 1920s".To counter Naumenko's claim that collectivization explains the famine Tauger argues ( in his words) how agro-environmental disasters better explain the regional discrepancies: "[Naumenko's] calculations again omit any consideration of the agro-environmental disasters that harmed farm production in 1932. In her appendices, Table C3, she does the same calculation with collectivization data from 1932, which she argues shows a closer correlation between collectivization and famine mortality (Naumenko 2021b, 33). Yet, as I showed, those agroenvironmental disasters were much worse in the regions with higher collectivization—especially Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and the Volga River basin (and also in Kazakhstan)—than elsewhere in the USSR. As I documented in my article and other publications, these were regions that had a history of environmental disasters that caused crop failures and famines repeatedly in Russian history."Tauger notes: "[Naumenko's] assumption that collectivization subjected peasants to higher procurements, but in 1932 in Ukraine this was clearly not the case" as "grain procurements both total and per-capita were much lower in Ukraine than anywhere else in the USSR in 1932".
Collectivization in the Soviet Union, including the Ukrainian SSR, was not popular among the peasantry, and forced collectivisation led to numerouspeasant revolts. TheOGPUrecorded 932 disturbances in Ukraine, 173 in the North Caucasus, and only 43 in the Central Black Earth Oblast (out of 1,630 total). Reports two years prior recorded over 4,000 unrests in Ukraine, while in other agricultural regions - Central Black Earth, Middle Volga, Lower Volga, and North Caucasus - the numbers were sightly above 1,000. OGPU's summaries also cited public proclamations of Ukrainian insurgents to restore theindependence of Ukraine, while reports by the Ukrainian officials included information about the declining popularity and authority of the party among peasants.Oleh Wolowyna comments that peasant resistance and the ensuing repression of said resistance was a critical factor for the famine in Ukraine and parts of Russia populated by national minorities like Germans and Ukrainians allegedly tainted by "fascism and bourgeois nationalism" according to Soviet authorities.
The collectivization and high procurement quota explanation for the famine is called into question by the fact that the oblasts of Ukraine with the highest losses wereKyivandKharkiv, which produced far lower amounts of grain than other sections of the country.A potential explanation for this was that Kharkiv and Kyiv fulfilled and over fulfilled their grain procurements in 1930 which led toraionsin these oblasts having their procurement quotas doubled in 1931 compared to the national average increase in procurement rate of 9%. While Kharkiv and Kyiv had their quotas increased, the Odesa oblast and some raions of Dnipropetrovsk oblast had their procurement quotas decreased.
According to Nataliia Levchuk of the Ptoukha Institute of Demography and Social Studies, "the distribution of the largely increased 1931 grain quotas in Kharkiv and Kyiv oblasts by raion was very uneven and unjustified because it was done disproportionally to the percentage of wheat sown area and their potential grain capacity."
Several repressive policies were implemented in Ukraine immediately preceding, during, and proceeding the famine, including but not limited to cultural-religious persecution theLaw of Spikelets,Blacklisting,the internal passport system, and harsh grain requisitions.
Coiner of the termgenocide,Raphael Lemkinconsidered the repression of the Orthodox Church to be a prong ofgenocideagainst Ukrainians when seen in correlation to the Holodomor famine.Collectivization did not just entail the acquisition of land from farmers but also the closing of churches, burning of icons, and the arrests of priests.Associating the church with the tsarist regime,the Soviet state continued to undermine the church through expropriations and repression.They cut off state financial support to the church and secularized church schools.
By early 1930 75% of the Autocephalistparishesin Ukraine were persecuted by Soviet authorities.The GPU instigated a show trial which denounced the Orthodox Church in Ukraine as a "nationalist, political, counter-revolutionary organization" and instigated a staged "self-dissolution."However the Church was later allowed to reorganize in December 1930 under a pro-Soviet cosmopolitan leader ofIvan Pavlovskyyet purges of the Church reignited during theGreat Purge.Changes in cultural politics also occurred.
First sovietshow trialin Ukraine in connection to the member of theUkrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Partyhas taken place as early as 1921.Yet, the first show trial related to Ukraine in the period of theFirst five-year planwas a trial in 1928 inNorth Caucasus Krai, known asShakhty Trial.Prior to this in October 1925 ShakhtyOkrug(previously part ofDonets Governorate) was transferred fromUkrainian SSRtoRSFSRand thus the trial was held in Moscow.Yet, one of the central ones, was the"Union for the Freedom of Ukraine" Trialin which 45 intellectuals, higher education professors, writers, a theologian and a priest were publicly prosecuted inKharkiv, then capital of Soviet Ukraine. Fifteen of the accused were executed, and 248 with links to the defendants were sent to the camps.Ukrainian Youth Associationwas also considered a "sub-division" of the "Union for Freedom of Ukraine" and thus its members were also trialed.Other notable Ukrainian processes included "People's Revolutionary Socialist Party" trial in 1930 (it was claimed that this was an illegal armed insurgent organisation created in December 1929, which existed inUkraineandChechnya)and "Ukrainian National Center" trial in 1931 (another non-existent counter-revolutionary organisation).InRSFSRat that time some othershow trialssuch as Industrial Party Trial (1930) and the1931 Menshevik Trialwere held. The total number is not known,but tens of thousandsof people are estimated to have been arrested, exiled, and/or executed during and after the trial including 30,000intellectuals, writers, teachers, and scientists.
The "Decree About the Protection of Socialist Property", nicknamed by the farmers theLaw of Spikelets, was enacted on 7 August 1932. The purpose of the law was to protect the property of thekolkhozcollective farms. It was nicknamed the Law of Spikelets because it allowed people to be prosecuted forgleaningleftover grain from the fields. There were more than 200,000 people sentenced under this law.
Stalinwrote a letter toLazar Kaganovichon 11 September 1932, shortly before Kaganovich andVyacheslav Molotovwere appointed heads of special commissions to oversee the grain procurements in Ukraine and Kuban (a region populated primarily by ethnic Ukrainians at the time), in which Stalin urged Kaganovich to force Ukraine into absolute compliance:
The blacklist system was formalized in 1932 by the 20 November decree "The Struggle against Kurkul Influence in Collective Farms";blacklisting, synonymous with a board of infamy, was one of the elements of agitation-propaganda in theSoviet Union, and especially Ukraine and the ethnically UkrainianKubanregion in the 1930s. A blacklisted collective farm, village, orraion(district) had its monetary loans and grain advances called in, stores closed, grain supplies, livestock, and food confiscated as a penalty, and was cut off from trade. Its Communist Party and collective farm committees were purged and subject to arrest, and their territory was forcibly cordoned off by theOGPUsecret police.
Although nominally targeting collective farms failing to meet grain quotas and independent farmers with outstanding tax-in-kind, in practice the punishment was applied to all residents of affected villages and raions, including teachers, tradespeople, and children.In the end 37 out of 392 districtsalong with at least 400 collective farms where put on the "black board" in Ukraine, more than half of the blacklisted farms being inDnipropetrovsk Oblastalone.Every single raion in Dnipropetrovsk had at least one blacklisted village, and in Vinnytsia oblast five entire raions were blacklisted.This oblast is situated right in the middle of traditional lands of theZaporizhian Cossacks. Cossack villages were also blacklisted in the Volga and Kuban regions of Russia.Some blacklisted areasinKharkivcould have death rates exceeding 40%while in other areas such asVinnytsiablacklisting had no particular effect on mortality.
Thepassport system in the Soviet Union(identity cards) was introduced on 27 December 1932 to deal with the exodus of peasants from the countryside. Individuals not having such a document could not leave their homes on pain of administrative penalties, such as internment inlabour camps(Gulag). On 22 January 1933,Joseph Stalinsigned a secret decree restricting travel by peasants after requests for bread began in the Kuban and Ukraine. Soviet authorities blamed the exodus of peasants during the famine on anti-Soviet elements, saying that "like the outflow from Ukraine last year, was organized by the enemies of Soviet power."
There was a wave of migration due to starvation and authorities responded by introducing a requirement that passports be used to go between republics and banning travel by rail.During March 1933GPUreported that 219,460 people were either intercepted and escorted back or arrested at its checkpoints meant to prevent movement of peasants between districts.It has been estimated that there were some 150,000 excess deaths as a result of this policy, and one historian asserts that these deaths constitute acrime against humanity.In contrast, historianStephen Kotkinargues that the sealing of the Ukrainian borders caused by the internal passport system was in order to prevent the spread of famine-related diseases.
Between January and mid-April 1933, a factor contributing to a surge of deaths within certain regions of Ukraine during the period was the relentless search for alleged hidden grain by the confiscation of all food stuffs from certain households, which Stalin implicitly approved of through a telegram he sent on 1 January 1933 to the Ukrainian government reminding Ukrainian farmers of the severe penalties for not surrendering grain they may be hiding.
On the other hand, considerable grain reserves were held back by the Soviet government. By 1 July 1933, around 1,141,000 tons of grain were kept in partially secret reserves which the government did not want to touch. Stephen Wheatcroft, Mark Tauger, and R.W. Davies conclude: "it seems certain that, if Stalin had risked lower levels of these reserves in spring and summer 1933, hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of lives could have been saved".
In order to make up for unfulfilled grain procurement quotas in Ukraine, reserves of grain were confiscated from three sources including, according to Oleh Wolowyna, "(a) grain set side for seed for the next harvest; (b) a grain fund for emergencies; (c) grain issued to collective farmers for previously completed work, which had to be returned if the collective farm did not fulfill its quota."
In Ukraine, there was a widespread purge of Communist party officials at all levels. According to Oleh Wolowyna, 390 "anti-Soviet, counter-revolutionary insurgent and chauvinist" groups were eliminated resulting in 37,797 arrests, that led to 719 executions, 8,003 people being sent toGulagcamps, and 2,728 being put into internal exile.120,000 individuals in Ukraine were reviewed in the first 10 months of 1933 in a top-to-bottom purge of the Communist party resulting in 23% being eliminated as perceived class hostile elements.Pavel Postyshevwas set in charge of placing people at the head of Machine-Tractor Stations in Ukraine which were responsible for purging elements deemed to be class hostile.The secretary of the Kharkiv Oblast referred to "bourgeois-nationalistic rabble" as "class enemies" even near the end of the famine.By the end of 1933, 60% of the heads of village councils and raion committees in Ukraine were replaced with an additional 40,000 lower-tier workers being purged.
Bandurais a traditional Ukrainian musical instrument, whereasbanduristswere the carriers of traditional songs and folklore. One of the communist newspapers in 1930 already stated that "being in love with nationalist romance is not a communist thing" and in December 1933 during the All-Ukrainian Union of Art Workers, thebanduraandkobzawere declared class-enemy instruments,which lead to the beginning of the repressions against the musicians playing them.
Despite the crisis, the Soviet government refused to ask for foreign aid for the famine and persistently denied the famine's existence.What aid was given was selectively distributed to preserve the collective farm system. Grain producing oblasts in Ukraine such asDnipropetrovskwere given more aid at an earlier time than more severely affected regions likeKharkivwhich produced less grain.Joseph Stalinhad quotedVladimir Leninduring the famine declaring: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."
This perspective is argued byMichael Ellmanto have influenced official policy during the famine, with those deemed to be idlers being disfavored in aid distribution as compared to those deemed "conscientiously working collective farmers".In this vein, Olga Andriewsky states that Soviet archives indicate that the most productive workers were prioritized for receiving food aid.
Food rationing in Ukraine was determined by city categories (where one lived, with capitals and industrial centers being given preferential distribution), occupational categories (with industrial and railroad workers being prioritized over blue collar workers and intelligentsia), status in the family unit (with employed persons being entitled to higher rations than dependents and the elderly), and type of workplace in relation to industrialization (with those who worked in industrial endeavors near steel mills being preferred in distribution over those who worked in rural areas or in food).According toJames Abbe, who visited Ukraine at that time, while the Soviet government insisted on him as well as other foreigners to sign an affidavit stating that "they had seen no forced labor in the Ukraine","only the actual industrial workers had received enough to eat and even their families had suffered".Describing the coal mines he visited in Donetsk region,James Abbementions: "The next day we went into the question of forced labor. Of course, the armed soldiers situated in the mine shafts, power houses and tipples had bayonets fastened to their rifles and revolvers strapped to their belts; but they were doubtless guarding the property — though the superintendent failed to tell us what they were guarding the mines against. Anyhow, the system of issuing and revoking food cards is far more sinister and effective than bayonets".
There was also migration in to Ukraine as a response to the famine: in response to the demographic collapse, the Soviet authorities ordered large-scale resettlements, with over 117,000 peasants from remote regions of the Soviet Union taking over the deserted farms.Areas depopulated by the famine were resettled by Russians in theZaporizhzhia, Donetsk andLuhanskoblasts, but not as much so in central Ukraine. In some areas where depopulation was due to migration rather than mortality, Ukrainians returned to their places of residence to find their homes occupied by Russians, leading to widespread fights between Ukrainian farmers and Russian settlers. Such clashes caused around one million Russian settlers to be returned home.
Torsion networks appeared in 1931.They were selling goods for foreign currency or exchanging them for precious metals. Originally only exclusively for foreigners, but later soviet citizens were also allowed to exchange the goods. During Holodomor people brought family heritage - crosses, earrings, wedding rings to Torgsins and exchanged it for special stamps, for which they could obtain basic goods - mostly flour, cereals or sugar. Torgsins operated at highly speculative prices and were known for long queues. With that mechanism authorities were able to extort from the population whatever could have been hidden during the confiscations. Many families survived, in particular thanks to Torgsin.Yet the network was also a cause of a psychological trauma,since people had to give up on family valuables and relics that had not only material, but also spiritual value. During the Holodomor, the network of torgsins expanded considerably—by the end of 1933, there were already about 300 such shops in Soviet Ukraine.In 1933, the population brought 45 tons of pure gold to torsgins. The network existed until 1936.
Evidence of widespreadcannibalismwas documented during the Holodomor:
Most cases of cannibalism were "necrophagy, the consumption of corpses of people who had died of starvation". But the murder of children for food was common as well. Many survivors told of neighbors who had killed and eaten their own children. One woman, asked why she had done this, "answered that her children would not survive anyway, but this way she would". She was arrested by the police. The police also documented cases of children being kidnapped, killed, and eaten, and "stories of children being hunted down as food" circulated in many areas.When nearly all grain and all kinds of animal meat had been exhausted, "a black market arose in human flesh" and it "may even have entered the official economy." The police kept a close eye on butcher shops and slaughterhouses, trying to prevent them from bringing human flesh into circulation.The Italian consul, Sergio Gradenigo, nevertheless reported from Kharkiv that the "trade of human meat becomes more active."
In March 1933, thesecret policeinKyiv provincecollected "ten or more reports of cannibalism every day" but concluded that "in reality there are many more such incidents", most of which went unreported. Those found guilty of cannibalism were often "imprisoned, executed, or lynched". But while the authorities were well informed about the extent of cannibalism, they also tried to suppress this information from becoming widely known, the chief of the secret police warning "that written notes on the subject do not circulate among the officials where they might cause rumours".And the information secretly collected failed to spur the Soviet government into action. Various reports of the horrors of the famine, including the cannibalism, were sent to Moscow, where they were apparently shelved and ignored.
Ukrainians in other parts of the Soviet Union also experienced famine and repressive policies. Rural districts with Ukrainian populations in parts of the Soviet Union outside of Ukraine had higher mortality rates in Russia and Belarus than other districts, this discrepancy did not however apply to urban Ukrainians in these areas.This is sometimes viewed as being connected to the Holodomor in Ukraine.
In 1932–1933, the policies of forced collectivization of the Ukrainian population of the Soviet Union, which caused a devastating famine that greatly affected the Ukrainian population of the Kuban. The number of documented victims of famine in Kuban was at least 62,000. According to other historians, the real death toll is many times higher.Brain Boeck thinks the figure more in the "hundreds of thousands".One source estimate that during theSoviet famine of 1932–1933Krasnodar lost over 14% of its population.Purges were also extensive in the region. 358 of 716 party secretaries in Kuban were removed, along with 43% of the 25,000 party members there; in total, 40% of the 115,000 to 120,000 rural party members in the North Caucasus were removed.Party officials associated withUkrainizationwere targeted, as the national policy was viewed to be connected with the failure of grain procurement by Soviet authorities.In this vein the Kuban corresponding to the famine had a reversal of the previously attempted policy of Ukrainisation. Prior to the reversal of Ukrainianization, the policy was failing in the Kuban with most local districts not completing it partially due to opposition by local Cossack nationalists and Russian chauvinists in the Kuban including by sabotage despite punitive threats from the state to complete the process made in May 1932.
The large Cossack stanitsa Poltavskaia sabotaged and resisted collectivization more than any other area in the Kuban which was perceived byLazar Kaganovichto be connected to Ukrainian nationalist and Cossack conspiracy.Kaganovich relentlessly pursued the policy of requisition of grain in Poltavskaia and the rest of the Kuban and personally oversaw the purging of local leaders and Cossacks. Kaganovich viewed the resistance of Poltavskaia through Ukrainian lens delivering oration in a mixed Ukrainian language. To justify this Kaganovich cited a letter allegedly written by a stanitsa ataman named Grigorii Omel'chenko advocating Cossack separatism and local reports of resistance to collectivization in association with this figure to substantiate this suspicion of the area.However Kaganocvich did not reveal in speeches throughout the region that many of those targeted by persecution in Poltavskaia had their family members and friends deported or shot including in years before the supposed Omel'chenko crisis even started. Ultimately due to being perceived as the most rebellious area almost all (or 12,000) members of the Poltavskaia stantisa were deported to the north.This coincided with and was a part of a wider deportation of 46,000cossacksfrom Kuban.According to the Holodomor Museum, 300,000 people were deported from the North Caucasus between 1930 and 1933, two thirds of them from the Kuban region.
Likely in connection to the affairs in Poltavskaia, Ukrainization was officially reversed in a decree on 26 December 1932; as stated in this decree, there was a two-week deadline to transfer all publishing and paperwork in the region to Russian, and the Ukrainian language was effectively banned in Kuban until 1991.A representative of the Ukrainian state publishing house claimed 1,500 Ukrainian teachers in the Kuban were either deported or killed though this number has not been verified.The professional Ukrainian theatre in Krasnodar was closed. All Ukrainian toponyms in the Kuban, which reflected the areas from which the first Ukrainians settlers had moved, were changed.The names ofStanytsiassuch as the rural town of Kyiv, in Krasnodar, was changed to "Krasnoartilyevskaya", and Uman to "Leningrad", andPoltavskaiato "Krasnoarmieiskaya". Russification, the Holodomor of 1932–1933 and other tactics used by the Union government led to a catastrophic fall in the population that self-identified as being Ukrainian in the Kuban. Official Soviet Union statistics of 1959 state that Ukrainians made up 4% of the population, in 1989 – 3%. The self-identified Ukrainian population of Kuban decreased from 915,000 in 1926, to 150,000 in 1939.
Ethnic minorities in Kazakhstan were significantly affected by theKazakh famine of 1930–1933in addition to the Kazakhs. Ukrainians in Kazakhstan had the second highest proportional death rate after the Kazakhs themselves. Between the 1926 and 1937 censuses, Ukrainian population in Kazakhstan decreased by 36% from 859,396 to 549,859 – mainly from famine and epidemics but also including emigration – while Uzbeks, Uighurs, and other ethnic minorities in Kazakhstan each lost between 12% and 30% of their populations.
Despite attempts by the Soviet authorities to hide the scale of the disaster, it became known abroad thanks to the publications of journalistsGareth Jones,Malcolm Muggeridge,Ewald AmmendeandRhea Clyman, and photographs made by engineerAlexander Wienerbergerand others. To support theirdenial of the famine, the Soviets hosted prominent Westerners such asGeorge Bernard Shaw, French ex-prime ministerÉdouard Herriot, and others atPotemkin villages, who then made statements that they had not seen hunger.
During theGerman occupation of Ukraine, the occupation authorities allowed the publication of articles in local newspapers about Holodomor and other communist crimes, but they also did not want to pay too much attention to this issue in order to avoid stirring national sentiment.In 1942,Stepan Sosnovy, anagronomistinKharkiv, published a comprehensive statistical research on the number of Holodomor casualties, based on documents from Soviet archives.
In thepost-warperiod, theUkrainian diasporadisseminated information about the Holodomor in Europe and North America. At first, the public attitude was rather cautious, as the information came from people who had lived in the occupied territories, but it gradually changed in the 1950s. Scientific study of the Holodomor, based on the growing number of memoirs published by survivors, began in the 1950s.
The Soviet Union long denied that the famine had taken place. TheNKVD(and laterKGB) controlled the archives for the Holodomor period and made relevant records available very slowly. The exact number of the victims remains unknown and is probably impossible to estimate even within a margin of error of a hundred thousand.However, by the end of 1933, millions of people had starved to death or otherwise died unnaturally in the Soviet republics. In 2001, based on a range of official demographic data, historianStephen G. Wheatcroftnoted that official death statistics for this period were systematically repressed and showed that many deaths were un-registered.
Estimates vary in their coverage, with some using the 1933 Ukraine borders, some of the current borders, and some counting ethnic Ukrainians. Someextrapolateon the basis of deaths in a given area, while others use archival data. Some historians question the accuracy of Soviet censuses, as they may reflectSoviet propaganda.
Other estimates come from recorded discussions between world leaders. In an August 1942 conversation, Stalin gaveWinston Churchillhis estimates of the number of "kulaks" who were repressed for resistingcollectivisationas 10 million, in all of the Soviet Union, rather than only in Ukraine. When using this number, Stalin implied that it included not only those who lost their lives but also those who were forcibly deported.
There are variations in opinion as to whether deaths inGulag labour campsshould be counted or only those who starved to death at home. Estimates before archival opening varied widely such as: 2.5 million (Volodymyr Kubiyovych);4.8 million (Vasyl Hryshko);and 5 million (Robert Conquest).
In the 1980s, dissident demographer and historian Alexander P. Babyonyshev (writing as Sergei Maksudov) estimated officially non-accountedchild mortalityin 1933 at 150,000,leading to a calculation that the number of births for 1933 should be increased from 471,000 to 621,000 (down from 1,184,000 in 1927).Given the decreasing birth rates and assuming the natural mortality rates in 1933 to be equal to the average annual mortality rate in 1927–1930 (524,000 per year), a natural population growth for 1933 would have been 97,000 (as opposed to the recorded decrease of 1,379,000). This was five times less than the growth in the previous three years (1927–1930). Straight-line extrapolation of population (continuation of the previous net change) between census takings in 1927 and 1936 would have been +4.043 million, which compares to a recorded −538,000 change. Overall change in birth and death amounts to 4.581 million fewer people but whether through factors of choice, disease or starvation will never be fully known.
In the 2000s, there were debates among historians and in civil society about the number of deaths as Soviet files were released and tension built between Russia and the Ukrainian presidentViktor Yushchenko. Yushchenko and other Ukrainian politicians described fatalities as in the region of seven to ten million.Yushchenko stated in a speech to theUnited States Congressthat the Holodomor "took away 20 million lives of Ukrainians,".FormerCanadian Prime MinisterStephen Harperissued a public statement giving the death toll at about 10 million.
Some Ukrainian and Western historians use similar figures.David R. Marplesgave a figure of 7.5 million in 2007.During an international conference held in Ukraine in 2016,Holodomor 1932–1933 loss of the Ukrainian nation, at the NationalUniversity of KyivTaras Shevchenko, it was claimed that during the Holodomor 7 million Ukrainians were killed, and in total, 10 million people died of starvation across the USSR.
However, the use of the 7 to 20 million figures has been criticized by historiansTimothy D. SnyderandStephen G. Wheatcroft. Snyder wrote: "President Viktor Yushchenko does his country a grave disservice by claiming ten million deaths, thus exaggerating the number of Ukrainians killed by a factor of three; but it is true that the famine in Ukraine of 1932–1933 was a result of purposeful political decisions, and killed about three million people."In an email toPostmedia News, Wheatcroft wrote: "I find it regrettable that Stephen Harper and other leading Western politicians are continuing to use such exaggerated figures for Ukrainian famine mortality" and "[t]here is absolutely no basis for accepting a figure of 10 million Ukrainians dying as a result of the famine of 1932–1933."In 2001, Wheatcroft had calculated total population loss (includingstillbirth) across the Union at 10 million and possibly up to 15 million between 1931 and 1934, including 2.8 million (and possibly up to 4.8 million excess deaths) and 3.7 million (up to 6.7 million) population losses including birth losses in Ukraine.
In 2002, Ukrainian historianStanislav Kulchytsky[d], using demographic data including those recently unclassified, narrowed the losses to about 3.2 million or, allowing for the lack of precise data, 3 million to 3.5 million.The number of recorded excess deaths extracted from the birth/death statistics from Soviet archives is contradictory. The data fail to add up to the differences between the results of the 1926 Census and the1937 Census.Kulchytsky summarized the declassified Soviet statistics as showing a decrease of 538,000 people in the population of Soviet Ukraine between 1926 census (28,926,000) and 1937 census (28,388,000).
Historians estimate a quarter of the death toll was from children and extrapolate a further 600,000 lost births.
Similarly, Wheatcroft's work from Soviet archives showed that excess deaths in Ukraine in 1932–1933 numbered a minimum of 1.8 million (2.7 including birth losses): "Depending upon the estimations made concerning unregistered mortality and natality, these figures could be increased to a level of 2.8 million to a maximum of 4.8 million excess deaths and to 3.7 million to a maximum of 6.7 million population losses (including birth losses)".
A 2002 study by French demographer Jacques Vallin and colleaguesutilising some similar primary sources to Kulchytsky, and performing an analysis with more sophisticated demographic tools with forward projection of expected growth from the 1926 census and backward projection from the 1939 census estimates the number of direct deaths for 1933 as 2.582 million. This number of deaths does not reflect the total demographic loss for Ukraine from these events as the fall of the birth rate during the crisis and the out-migration contribute to the latter as well. The total population shortfall from the expected value between 1926 and 1939 estimated by Vallin amounted to 4.566 million.
Of this number, 1.057 million is attributed to the birth deficit, 930,000 to forced out-migration, and 2.582 million to the combination of excess mortality and voluntary out-migration. With the latter assumed to be negligible, this estimate gives the number of deaths as the result of the 1933 famine about 2.2 million. According to demographic studies,life expectancy, which had been in the high forties to low fifties, fell sharply for those born in 1932 to 28 years, and for 1933 fell further to the extremely low 10.8 years for females and 7.3 years for males. It remained abnormally low for 1934 but, as commonly expected for the post-crisis period peaked in 1935–36.
According to Snyder in 2010, the recorded figure of excess deaths was 2.4 million. However, Snyder claims that this figure is "substantially low" due to many deaths going unrecorded. Snyder states that demographic calculations carried out by the Ukrainian government provide a figure of 3.89 million dead, and opined that the actual figure is likely between these two figures, approximately 3.3 million deaths to starvation and disease related to the starvation in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933. Snyder also estimates that of the million people who died in theRussian Soviet Federative Socialist Republicfrom famine at the same time, approximately 200,000 were ethnic Ukrainians due to Ukrainian-inhabited regions being particularly hard hit in Russia.
Russian historianAleksandr Shubinand Kulchytsky believe that figures recorded by Soviet censuses are reliable, and that the figure of unrecorded deaths is not substantial. Shubin writes that for 10 years only around 300 000 deaths could go unrecorded in the whole Soviet Union, and estimates the number of direct deaths as between 1 and 2 millions.
As a child,Mikhail Gorbachev, born into a mixed Russian-Ukrainian family, experienced the famine inStavropol Krai, Russia. He recalled in a memoir that "In that terrible year [in 1933] nearly half the population of my native village,Privolnoye, starved to death, including two sisters and one brother of my father."
Wheatcroft andR. W. Daviesconcluded that disease was the cause of a large number of deaths: in 1932–1933, there were 1.2 million cases of typhus and 500,000 cases oftyphoid fever. Malnourishment increases fatality rates from many diseases, and are not counted by some historians.From 1932 to 1934, the largest rate of increase was recorded for typhus, commonly spread bylice. In conditions of harvest failure and increased poverty, lice are likely to increase.
Gathering numerous refugees at railway stations, on trains and elsewhere facilitates the spread. In 1933, the number of recorded cases was 20 times the 1929 level. The number of cases per head of population recorded in Ukraine in 1933 was already considerably higher than in the USSR as a whole. By June 1933, the incidence in Ukraine had increased to nearly 10 times the January level, and it was much higher than in the rest of the USSR.
Estimates of the human losses due to famine must account for the numbers involved in migration (includingforced resettlement). According to Soviet statistics, the migration balance for the population in Ukraine for 1927–1936 period was a loss of 1.343 million people. Even when the data were collected, the Soviet statistical institutions acknowledged that the precision was less than for the data of the natural population change. The total number of deaths in Ukraine due to unnatural causes for the given ten years was 3.238 million. Accounting for the lack of precision, estimates of the human toll range from 2.2 million to 3.5 million deaths.
According to Babyonyshev's 1981 estimate,about 81.3% of the famine victims in the Ukrainian SSR were ethnic Ukrainians, 4.5%Russians, 1.4%Jewsand 1.1% werePoles. ManyBelarusians,Volga Germansand other nationalities were victims as well. The Ukrainian rural population was the hardest hit by the Holodomor. Since the peasantry constituted a demographic backbone of the Ukrainian nation,the tragedy deeply affected the Ukrainians for many years. In an October 2013 opinion poll (in Ukraine) 38.7% of those polled stated "my families had people affected by the famine", 39.2% stated they did not have such relatives, and 22.1% did not know.
Scholars continue to debate whether the human-made Soviet famine was a central act in a campaign ofgenocide,or a tragic byproduct of rapidSoviet industrializationand the collectivization of agriculture.Whether the Holodomor is a genocide isa significant and contentious issue in modern politics. A number of governments, such as Canada, have recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide. The decision was criticized byDavid R. Marples, who claimed that states who recognize the Holodomor as a genocide are motivated by emotion, or on pressure by local and international groups rather than hard evidence.In contrast, some sources argue that Russian influence and unwillingness to worsen relations with Russia would prevent or stall the recognition of Holodomor as a genocide in certain regions (for example, Germany).
Scholarly positions are diverse.Raphael Lemkin(a pioneer of genocide studieswho coined the termgenocide, and an initiator of theGenocide Convention), called the famine an intentional genocide.James MaceandNorman Naimarkhave written that the Holodomor was a genocide and the intentional result of Soviet policies under Stalin.According to Lemkin, Ukraine was "perhaps the classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment inRussification– the destruction of the Ukrainian nation". Lemkin stated that, because Ukrainians were very sensitive to the racial murder of its people and way too populous, the Soviet regime could not follow a pattern of total extermination (as in theHolocaust). Instead the genocidal effort consisted of four steps: 1) extermination of the Ukrainian national elite, 2) liquidation of theUkrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, 3) extermination of a significant part of the Ukrainian peasantry as "custodians of traditions, folklore and music, national language and literature", and 4) populating the territory with other nationalities with intent of mixing Ukrainians with them, which would eventually lead to the dissolution of the Ukrainian nation.Because of these four factors, Lemkin considered the Holodomor an attempt to destroy the whole Ukrainian nation, not just the Ukrainian peasantry.The "rediscovery" of his 1953 address about the Holodomor has influenced Holodomor scholars, especially his view of genocide as a complex process targeting institutions, culture, and economic existence of a group and not necessarily meaning its "immediate destruction".
Stanislav Kulchytsky, who recognizes Holodomor as genocide, believes that historians should approach the study of the famine with realization that in the Soviet socialist construction "appearance belied reality", and that the real intentions of some ideas and policies would not be put on paper. He nevertheless believes that there is enough evidence that proves that Stalin felt hostility and distrust towards Ukrainians and wanted to suppress any potential disobedience from their side. Kulchytsky bases his claims among other things on Stalin's telegrams and letters sent to the highest-ranked officials shortly before and during the time when most lethal policies were applied and executed in Ukraine and Kuban. He believes that while the famine started rather as a result of collectivization, near the end of 1932 it was turned into an instrument of intentional starvation of millions of Ukrainians to death.
Timothy Snyderstates that, in his opinion, Holodomor meets the criteria of theGenocide convention. He does, however, refrain from using the term and prefers the term "mass killing" instead, arguing that the public misinterprets the termgenocideas an intention to murder every member of the national or ethnic group, something that theArmenian genocideandHolocaustare closer to than any other cases, including the Holodomor.
Other historians such asMichael Ellmanconsider the Holodomor acrime against humanity, but do not classify it as a genocide.EconomistSteven Rosefieldeand historianRobert Conquestconsider the death toll to be primarily due to state policy, and poor harvests.Following thedissolution of the Soviet Union, Conquest was granted access to the Soviet state archives alongside other western academics.In 2004, Wheatcroft published a private correspondence that he had with Conquest. In the exchange, Conquest wrote that he is now of the opinion that the Holodomor was not purposefully inflicted by Stalin but "What I argue is that with resulting famine imminent, he could have prevented it, but put "Soviet interest" other than feeding the starving first – thus consciously abetting it".In an interview recorded in 2006 Conquest stated the Holodomor should be recognized as an attack on the Ukrainian people and discussed problems with the use of the termgenocide.
Robert Davies,Stephen Kotkin,Stephen WheatcroftandJ. Arch Gettyreject the notion that Stalin intentionally wanted to kill Ukrainians, but conclude that Stalinist policies and widespread incompetence among government officials set the stage for famine in Ukraine and other Soviet republics.Anne Applebaumbelieves that the famine was planned to undermine Ukrainian identity but discusses how shifts in understanding of the termgenocidemean that it is more difficult to apply now that it was when the term was initially conceived. Another argument she puts forward is that the question of genocide is not as important as it once was because it was a proxy debate about Ukraine and Ukrainians' right to exist, a right which no longer needs historic justification.
Scholars consider Holodomor denial to be the assertion that the 1932–1933 famine inSoviet Ukrainedid not occur.Denying the existence of the famine was the Soviet state's position and reflected in bothSoviet propagandaand the work of some Western journalists and intellectuals includingGeorge Bernard Shaw,Walter Duranty, andLouis Fischer.In Britain and the United States, eye-witness accounts by Welsh freelance journalistGareth Jonesand by theAmerican CommunistFred Bealwere met with widespread disbelief.
In the Soviet Union, any discussion of the famine was banned entirely. Ukrainian historian Stanislav Kulchytsky stated the Soviet government ordered him to falsify his findings and depict the famine as an unavoidable natural disaster, to absolve the Communist Party and uphold the legacy of Stalin.
The event is considered a genocide by Ukraineand theEuropean Parliament,and thelower house of parliamentof Russia condemned the Soviet regime "that has neglected the lives of people for the achievement of economic and political goals".
On 10 November 2003 at theUnited Nations,25 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, and United States signed a joint statement on the seventieth anniversary of the Holodomor with the followingpreamble:
In 1984, theUnited States Congressestablished theU.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, which compiled its 1988Report to Congress.In the report, the US government concludes with anecdotal evidence, that the Soviets had purposely prevented Ukrainians from leaving famine-struck regions. This was corroborated following the discovery of Stalin's letter to Molotov titled, "Preventing the Mass Exodus of Peasants who are Starving", restricting travel by peasants after "in the Kuban and Ukraine a massive outflow of peasants 'for bread' has begun", that "like the outflow from Ukraine last year, was organized by the enemies of Soviet power."The commission published the earlier-mentioned letter written by Stalin toLazar Kaganovichon 11 September 1932.
TheUkrainian parliamentfirst recognized the Holodomor as a genocide in 2003,and criminalized bothHolodomor denialandHolocaust denialin 2006. In 2010, the Kyiv Court of Appeal ruled that the Holodomor was an act of genocide and heldJoseph Stalin,Vyacheslav Molotov,Lazar Kaganovich,Stanislav Kosior,Pavel Postyshev,Mendel Khatayevich,Vlas Chubarand otherBolshevikleaders responsible.
TheHolodomorhas been compared to theIrish Famineof 1845–1849 that took place in Ireland under British rule,which has been the subject ofsimilar controversy and debate.
Russia's war strategy inthe war against Ukraine in 2022has drawn parallels with the Holodomor for the intentional impediment of relief supplies to civilians, the blockade of Ukrainian ports that threatened to cause famine in other countries, and the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure to deprive Ukrainians of the necessities of life.As of early May 2022,Ukraine's Defense Ministry claims that Russian forces have plundered at least 500,000 tons of grain from farmers since the invasion started. This looting included the seizure of industrial farm equipment, such as tractors, and forcing farmers to surrender 70% of their grain yields.Russia's use of starvation as a weapon of war in 2022 has been cited as part of a genocidal pattern in a major report by 35 legal and genocide experts.
Ukraine'sMinistry of Foreign Affairshas run campaigns and lobbied theUnited Nationsand theCouncil of Europeto recognise the Holodomor as a genocide internationally.The governments of various countries have issued statements recognizing the Holodomor as genocide including Ukraine since 2006,and 13 other countries as of 2015.
In November 2022, theBelarusian opposition in exilerecognised the Holodomor as a genocide,andPope Franciscompared the Russian war in Ukraine with its targeteddestruction of civilian infrastructureto the "terrible Holodomor Genocide", during an address at St. Peter's Square.As of October 2023, 34 countries recognise the Holodomor as a genocide.
Countries whose legislatures have passed a resolution recognizing the Holodomor as a genocide:
Other political bodies whose legislatures have passed a resolution recognizing Holodomor as a genocide:
To honour those who perished in the Holodomor, monuments have been dedicated and public events held annually in Ukraine and worldwide.
Since 1998, Ukraine has officially observed theHolodomor Memorial Dayon the fourth Saturday of November,established by a presidential decree ofLeonid Kuchma. In 2006, customs were established for a minute of silence at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, flags flown at half-mast, and restrictions on entertainment broadcasting.In 2007, three days of commemorations on theMaidan Nezalezhnostiincluded video testimonies of communist crimes in Ukraine and documentaries, scholarly lectures,and the National Bank of Ukraine issued a set of commemorative coins.
As of 2009,Ukrainian schoolchildren take a more extensive course of the history of the Holodomor.
TheNational Museum of the Holodomor-Genocidewas erected on the slopes of the Dnieper river, welcoming its first visitors on 22 November 2008.The ceremony of the memorial's opening was dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor. The year 2008 was declared by presidentViktor Yushchenkoas the "Year of Remembrance" to commemorate victims of the famine.
In an October 2013 opinion poll, 33.7% of Ukrainians fully agreed and 30.4% rather agreed with the statement "The Holodomor was the result of actions committed by theSoviet authorities, along with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and was the result of human actions".In the same poll, 22.9% of those polled fully or partially agreed with the view that the famine was caused by natural circumstances, but 50.5% disagreed with that.Furthermore, 45.4% of respondents believed that the Holodomor was "a deliberate attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation" and 26.2% rather or completely disagreed with this.
In a November 2021 poll, 85% agreed that the Holodomor was a genocide of Ukrainians.A poll undertaken in Ukraine in 2022 recorded 93% agreeing that the Holodomor was a genocide with 3% disagreeing.
On 19 October 2022, Russian occupation authorities dismantled a Holodomor monument in the destroyed city of Mariupol on the basis that it was not a monument but a symbol of "disinformation at the state level".Ukrainian culture ministerOleksandr Tkachenkosaid "such acts signifies that the current Russian regime is a true successor to the one guilty of crimes against humanity and the Ukrainian people".
Perhaps the first public commemoration of victims was a procession held by Ukrainians displaced in the Second World War in 1948 in Munich, the administrative centre of theAmerican zone of occupationin Germany.The most recent countries to recognize Holodomor as a genocide are Germany and Vatican City.
The first public monument to the Holodomor was erected and dedicated in 1983 outside City Hall inEdmonton,Alberta, Canada, to mark the 50th anniversary of the famine-genocide. Since then, the fourth Saturday in November has in many jurisdictions been marked as the official day of remembrance for people who died as a result of the 1932–1933 Holodomor and political repression.
On 22 November 2008,Ukrainian Canadiansmarked the beginning of National Holodomor Awareness Week and Holodomor Memorial Day (the fourth Friday of November in Schools and the fourth Saturday of November globally). The success of this initiative is attributed toValentina Kuryliw, as chair of the National Holodomor Education Committeeof the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism MinisterJason Kenneyattended a vigil inKyiv.In November 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited the Holodomor memorial in Kyiv, although Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych did not join him.
Saskatchewan became the first jurisdiction in North America and the first province in Canada to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide.The Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor) Memorial Day Act was introduced in the Saskatchewan Legislature on 6 May 2008,and received royal assent on 14 May 2008.
On 9 April 2009, the province ofOntariounanimously passed bill 147, "The Holodomor Memorial Day Act", which calls for the fourth Saturday in November to be a day of remembrance. This was the first piece of legislation in the Province's history to be introduced with Tri-Partisan sponsorship: the joint initiators of the bill wereDave Levac, MPP for Brant (Liberal Party);Cheri DiNovo, MPP for Parkdale–High Park (NDP); andFrank Klees, MPP for Newmarket–Aurora (PC). MPP Levac was made a chevalier ofUkraine's Order of Merit.
On 2 June 2010, the province ofQuebecunanimously passed bill 390, "Memorial Day Act on the great Ukrainian famine and genocide (the Holodomor)".
On 25 September 2010, a new Holodomor monument was unveiled at St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Church,Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, bearing the inscription "Holodomor: Genocide By Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933" and a section in Ukrainian bearing mention of the 10 million victims.
On 21 September 2014, a statue entitled "Bitter Memories of Childhood" was unveiled outside theManitoba Legislative BuildinginWinnipegto memorialize the Holodomor.
A monument to the Holodomor has been erected on Calgary'sMemorial Drive, itself originally designated to honour Canadian servicemen of the First World War. The monument is located in the district ofRenfrewnear Ukrainian Pioneer Park, which pays tribute to the contributions of Ukrainian immigrants to Canada.
On 21 October 2018, a memorial statue was unveiled on Canada Boulevard inExhibition Placeof Toronto. The site provides a place for an annual memorial on the fourth Saturday of November.
On 16 March 2006, theSenate of the Republic of Polandpaid tribute to the victims of theGreat Famineand declared it an act of genocide, expressing solidarity with the Ukrainian nation and its efforts to commemorate this crime.
On 22 January 2015, a Holodomor monument was erected in the city ofLublin.
The Ukrainian Weeklyreported a meeting taking place on 27 February 1982 in the parish center of theUkrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Familyin commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Great Famine caused by the Soviet authorities. On 20 March 1982, theUkrainian Weeklyalso reported a multi-ethnic community meeting that was held on 15 February on the North Shore Drive at theUkrainian Villagein Chicago to commemorate the famine which took the lives of seven million Ukrainians. Other events in commemoration were held in other places around the United States as well.
On 29 May 2008, the city ofBaltimoreheld a candlelight commemoration for the Holodomor at the War Memorial Plaza in front of City Hall. This ceremony was part of the larger international journey of the "International Holodomor Remembrance Torch", which began in Kyiv and made its way through thirty-three countries. Twenty-two other US cities were also visited during the tour. Then-MayorSheila Dixonpresided over the ceremony and declared 29 May to be "Ukrainian Genocide Remembrance Day in Baltimore". She referred to the Holodomor "among the worst cases of man's inhumanity towards man".
On 2 December 2008, a ceremony was held inWashington, D.C., for the Holodomor Memorial.On 13 November 2009,U.S. PresidentBarack Obamareleased a statement on Ukrainian Holodomor Remembrance Day. In this, he said that "remembering the victims of the man-made catastrophe of Holodomor provides us an opportunity to reflect upon the plight of all those who have suffered the consequences of extremism and tyranny around the world".NSC Spokesman Mike Hammer released a similar statement on 20 November 2010.
In 2011, the American day of remembrance of Holodomor was held on 19 November. The statement released by the White House Press Secretary reflects on the significance of this date, stating that "in the wake of this brutal and deliberate attempt to break the will of the people of Ukraine, Ukrainians showed great courage and resilience. The establishment of a proud and independent Ukraine twenty years ago shows the remarkable depth of the Ukrainian people's love of freedom and independence".
On 7 November 2015, theHolodomor Genocide Memorialwas opened in Washington D.C.
In the115th Congress, both theUnited States Senateand theUnited States House of Representativesadopted resolutions commemorating the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor, "the Soviet Union's manmade famine that it committed against the people of Ukraine in 1932 and 1933."The Senate Resolution, S. Res. 435 (115th Congress)was adopted on 3 October 2018 and stated that the U.S. Senate "solemnly remembers the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 and extends its deepest sympathies to the victims, survivors, and families of this tragedy."
On 11 December 2018, the United States House of Representatives adopted H. Res. 931 (115th Congress),a resolution extending the House's "deepest sympathies to the victims and survivors of the Holodomor of 1932–1933, and their families" and condemned "the systematic violations of human rights, including the freedom of self-determination and freedom of speech, of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet Government."On 12 May 2022, and at the 117th United States congress, a new H. Res. 1109 was adopted, recognizing the Holodomor as a genocide and the resolution to serve as a reminder of the repressive Soviet policies including the blockade policy that prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid and people from escaping.
The 2019 feature filmMr Jones, starringJames Nortonand directed byAgnieszka Holland, focuses on Jones and his investigation of and reporting on the Ukrainian famine in the face of political and journalistic opposition. In January 2019, it was selected to compete for theGolden Bearat the69th Berlin International Film Festival.The film won Grand Prix Golden Lions at the 44thGdynia Film Festivalin September 2019.
On 23 November 2022,Pope Francisheld a ceremony to remember the victims of the famine. He referred to the Holodomor as a genocide. "Let us remember long-suffering Ukraine. This Saturday marks the anniversary of the terrible genocide of the Holodomor in 1932–1933 artificially caused by Stalin. Let us pray for the victims of this genocide and pray for the all Ukrainians, the children, the women and the elderly, the babies, who are today suffering the martyrdom of aggression."
Ulas Samchuk's novelMaria(1934) is dedicated to the Holodomor (English translation published 1952).
Katherine Marsh's bookThe Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine(2023)was a finalist in the 2023National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
The playHolodomorpremiered in Tehran, Iran in February 2021.