The causes of the Holodomor, the

famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompan ...

that ravaged

Soviet Ukraine The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( uk, Украї́нська Радя́нська Соціалісти́чна Респу́бліка, ; russian: Украи́нская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респ ...

during 1932 and 1933, resulting in the death of around 3–5 million people, are the subject of scholarly and political debate, such as the Holodomor genocide question. Stephen Wheatcroft believes the famine was the unintended consequence of problems arising from Soviet agricultural collectivization implemented to support the program of rapid

industrialization in the Soviet Union Industrialisation in the Soviet Union was a process of accelerated building-up of the industrial potential of the Soviet Union to reduce the economy's lag behind the developed capitalist states, which was carried out from May 1929 to June 1941. ...

under

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...

. Other historians believe policies were intentionally designed to cause the famine.С. Уиткрофт ( Stephen G. Wheatcroft)
"О демографических свидетельствах трагедии советской деревни в 1931—1933 гг."
(On demographic evidence of the tragedy of the Soviet village in 1931-1833), "Трагедия советской деревни: Коллективизация и раскулачивание 1927-1939 гг.: Документы и материалы. Том 3. Конец 1930-1933 гг.", Российская политическая энциклопедия, 2001, , с. 885, Приложение № 2 Originally published in the ''

Edmonton Journal The ''Edmonton Journal'' is a daily newspaper in Edmonton, Alberta. It is part of the Postmedia Network. History The ''Journal'' was founded in 1903 by three local businessmen — John Macpherson, Arthur Moore and J.W. Cunningham — as ...

'', 30 November 2005.

Stanislav Kulchytsky Stanislav and variants may refer to: People *Stanislav (given name), a Slavic given name with many spelling variations (Stanislaus, Stanislas, Stanisław, etc.) Places * Stanislav, a coastal village in Kherson, Ukraine * Stanislaus County, Cal ...

, "Holodomor of 1932–1933 as genocide: the gaps in the proof", ''

Den Den may refer to: * Den (room), a small room in a house * Maternity den, a lair where an animal gives birth Media and entertainment * ''Den'' (album), 2012, by Kreidler * Den (''Battle Angel Alita''), a character in the ''Battle Angel Alita ...

'', 17 February 2007
in Russianin Ukrainian
/ref> Some of them suggest that the famine may fall under the definition of genocide that entered international law with the 1948

Genocide Convention The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or the Genocide Convention, is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to pursue the enforcement of its prohibition. It wa ...

.Peter Finn
Aftermath of a Soviet Famine
''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'', 27 April 2008, "There are no exact figures on how many died. Modern historians place the number between 2.5 million and 3.5 million. Yushchenko and others have said at least 10 million were killed."

, "Holodomor-33: Why and how?", ''

Zerkalo Nedeli ''Dzerkalo Tyzhnia'' ( ua, Дзеркало тижня), usually referred to in English as the ''Mirror Weekly'', was one of Ukraine's most influential analytical weekly-publisher newspapers, founded in 1994.in Russianin Ukrainian

Scholarly debate

Debate on the harvest

Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...

'' says that there was no physical basis for famine in Ukraine, and that Soviet authorities set quotas for Ukraine at exceedingly high levels. According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, "there were two bad harvests in 1931 and 1932, largely but not wholly a result of natural conditions", within the Soviet Union; Wheatcroft estimates that 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 (according to Wheatcroft and others) reported a yield of 68.9 million tons. Mark Tauger has suggested an even lower harvest of 45 million tons based on data from 40% of collective farms which has been criticized by other scholars. Wheatcroft suggested that anthropologic hazards such as various agrotechnological failures may have exacerbated the low harvest. Tauger, in contrast, argues that human factors such as low traction power and an exhausted workforce were worse in 1933 than previous years yet that year there had been a higher harvest, so the cause of the low harvest was mostly due to various natural factors.

Regional variation

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 being

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Ky ...

and

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine.

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 to raions in these Oblasts having their procurement quotas doubled in 1931 compared to the national average increase in procurement rate of 9%, in fact while Kharkiv and Kyiv had their quotas increased the Odesa oblast and some raions of Dnipropetrovsk oblast had their procurement quotas decreased. In addition 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."

Ethical evaluation of Soviet policy

According to

Simon Payaslian Simon Payaslian is an Armenian-American historian, author, editor, who has held the Charles K. and Elizabeth M. Kenosian Chair in Modern Armenian History and Literature at Boston University since 2007. From 2002 to 2007 he held the Kaloosdian/Muga ...

, a tentative scholarly consensus classifies the Soviet famine (at least in Ukraine) as a

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...

, whereas John Archibald Getty states that the scholarly consensus classifies the Holodomor as a policy blunder that affected many nationalities, rather than some genocidal plan. Scholars say that it remains a significant issue in modern politics and dispute whether Soviet policies would fall under the legal definition of genocide. Several scholars have disputed that the famine was a genocidal act by the Soviet government, including Stephen G. Wheatcroft, R. W. Davies, and Mark Tauger. Getty says that the "overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars working in the new archives ..is that the terrible famine of the 1930s was the result of Stalinist bungling and rigidity rather than some genocidal plan." Wheatcroft says that the Soviet government's policies during the famine were criminal acts of fraud and manslaughter, though not outright murder or genocide. In regard to the Soviet state's reaction to this crisis, Wheatcroft comments: "The good harvest of 1930 led to the decisions to export substantial amounts of grain in 1931 and 1932. The Soviet leaders also assumed that the wholesale socialisation of livestock farming would lead to the rapid growth of meat and dairy production. These policies failed, and the Soviet leaders attributed the failure not to their own lack of realism but to the machinations of enemies. Peasant resistance was blamed on the kulaks, and the increased use of force on a large scale almost completely replaced attempts at persuasion." Wheatcroft says that Soviet authorities refused to scale down grain procurements despite the low harvest, and that " heatcroft and his colleague'swork has confirmed – if confirmation were needed – that the grain campaign in 1932/33 was unprecedentedly harsh and repressive."

biographer

Stephen Kotkin Stephen Mark Kotkin (born February 17, 1959) is an American historian, academic, and author. He is currently the John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he is also co-director of the pro ...

supports a similar view, stating that while "there is no question of Stalin's responsibility for the famine" and many deaths could have been prevented if not for the "insufficient" and counterproductive Soviet measures, there is no evidence for Stalin's intention to kill the Ukrainians deliberately. There are letters from

Grigory Petrovsky Grigory Ivanovich Petrovsky (russian: Григо́рий Ива́нович Петро́вский, uk, Григо́рій Іва́нович Петро́вський, translit=Hryhorii Ivanovych Petrovskyi) (3 February 1878 - 9 January 1958) wa ...

and

Vlas Chubar Vlas Yakovlevich Chubar ( uk, Влас Якович Чубар; russian: Вла́с Я́ковлевич Чуба́рь) ( – 26 February 1939) was a Ukrainian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician. Chubar was arrested during the Great ...

to Stalin and Molotov stating that "At least 100 districts require urgent supply assistance" enforcing the fact the Stalin was well aware of what was going on. While Mark Tauger considers the famine to be the result of natural factors stating that "the harsh 1932–1933 procurements only displaced the famine from urban areas" but the low harvest "made a famine inevitable." Ultimately concluding that it is difficult to accept the famine "as the result of the 1932 grain procurements and as a conscious act of genocide" he still concurs with Wheatcroft that "the regime was still responsible for the deprivation and suffering of the Soviet population in the early 1930s", and "if anything, these data show that the effects of ollectivization and forced industrializationwere worse than has been assumed."

Deliberately engineered or continuation of civil war

Dekulakization

During the 1930s, the Soviet Union was led by

, who sought to reshape

Soviet society The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the country's 69-year existence. It was contributed to by people of various nationalities from every one of fifteen union republics, although a majority of the influence was made ...

from

New Economic Policy The New Economic Policy (NEP) () was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, ...

toward stricter

economic planning Economic planning is a resource allocation mechanism based on a computational procedure for solving a constrained maximization problem with an iterative process for obtaining its solution. Planning is a mechanism for the allocation of resources ...

. As the leader of the Soviet Union, he constructed a state whose policies have been blamed for millions of deaths. A campaign of

political repression Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereby ...

, including arrests, deportations, and executions of people proclaimed traitors engaged in sabotaging collectivism, often targeted for belonging to specific demographic groups rather than as individuals, occurred from 1929 to 1932. The bourgeois were labeled ''

kulak Kulak (; russian: кула́к, r=kulák, p=kʊˈlak, a=Ru-кулак.ogg; plural: кулаки́, ''kulakí'', 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), also kurkul () or golchomag (, plural: ), was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned ove ...

s'' and were class enemies. More than 1.8 million peasants were deported in 1930–1931.

Robert Conquest George Robert Acworth Conquest (15 July 1917 – 3 August 2015) was a British historian and poet. A long-time research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Conquest was most notable for his work on the Soviet Union. His books ...

(1986) ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine''. Oxford University Press. .Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski,

Stéphane Courtois Stéphane Courtois (born 25 November 1947) is a French historian and university professor, a director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), professor at the Catholic Institute of Higher Studies (ICES) in La Ro ...

, ''

The Black Book of Communism ''The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression'' is a 1997 book by Stéphane Courtois, Andrzej Paczkowski, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin, and several other European academics documenting a history of political repression by co ...

: Crimes, Terror, Repression'',

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...

, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, Lynne Viola, ''The Unknown Gulag. The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements''

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

2007, hardback, 320 pages This policy was accomplished simultaneously with

collectivization in the Soviet Union The Soviet Union introduced the collectivization (russian: Коллективизация) of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during the ascension of Joseph Stalin. It began during and was part of the first five-year plan. Th ...

and effectively brought all

agriculture in the Soviet Union Agriculture in the Soviet Union was mostly collectivized, with some limited cultivation of private plots. It is often viewed as one of the more inefficient sectors of the economy of the Soviet Union. A number of food taxes ( prodrazverstka, pro ...

under state control. The stated purpose of the campaign was to fight the

counter-revolution A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revoluti ...

and build

socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes th ...

in the countryside. Three broad categories of the peasants

The "liquidation of the kulaks as a

class Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differently ...

" was announced by Stalin on 27 December 1929. The decision was formalized in a resolution, "On measures for the elimination of kulak households in districts of comprehensive

collectivization Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...

", on 30 January 1930. The kulaks were divided into three categories: those to be executed for treason or imprisoned as decided by the local secret political police; those to be exiled for treason to

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...

, the north, the

Urals The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...

, or

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

, after determined to be traitors, the government's confiscation of their property occurred; and, those considered traitors or were guilty of terrorism were to be evicted from their houses and used in labour colonies within their own districts.

Targeting of the Soviet Ukraine

Although famine, allegedly caused by collectivization, raged in many parts of the Soviet Union in 1932, special and particularly lethal policies, according to

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

historian

Timothy Snyder Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute ...

in his book '' Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin'' (2010), were adopted in and largely limited to Ukraine at the end of 1932 and 1933. Snyder lists seven crucial policies that applied only, or mainly, to Soviet Ukraine. He states: "Each of them may seem like an anodyne administrative measure, and each of them was certainly presented as such at the time, and yet each had to kill." Among them are: * From 18 November 1932, peasants from Ukraine were required to return extra grain they had previously earned for meeting their targets. State police and party brigades were sent into these regions to root out any food they could find. * Two days later, a law was passed forcing peasants who could not meet their grain quotas to surrender any livestock they had. * Eight days later, collective farms that failed to meet their quotas were placed on "blacklists" in which they were forced to surrender 15 times their quota. These farms were picked apart for any possible food by party activists. Blacklisted communes had no right to trade or to receive deliveries of any kind, and became death zones. * On 5 December 1932, Stalin's security chief presented the justification for terrorizing Ukrainian party officials to collect the grain. It was considered treason if anyone refused to do their part in grain requisitions for the state. * In November 1932, Ukraine was required to provide 1/3 of the grain collection of the entire Soviet Union. As

Lazar Kaganovich Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, also Kahanovich (russian: Ла́зарь Моисе́евич Кагано́вич, Lázar' Moiséyevich Kaganóvich; – 25 July 1991), was a Soviet politician and administrator, and one of the main associates of ...

put it, the Soviet state would fight "ferociously" to fulfill the plan. * In January 1933, Ukraine's borders were sealed in order to prevent Ukrainian peasants from fleeing to other republics. By the end of February 1933, approximately 190,000 Ukrainian peasants had been caught trying to flee Ukraine and were forced to return to their villages to starve. * The collection of grain continued even after the annual requisition target for 1932 was met in late January 1933.

Ethnic discrimination, and lack of favored industries

According to some scholars,

and 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. According to a

Centre for Economic Policy Research The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) is an independent, non‐partisan, pan‐European non‐profit organisation. Its mission is to enhance the quality of policy decisions through providing policy‐relevant research, based soundly in e ...

paper 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 amounts 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.

Requisition quotas

RIAN archive 79113 Seizing grain from kulaks

In the summer of 1930, the Soviet government had instituted a program of food requisitioning, ostensibly to increase grain exports. The same year Ukraine produced 27% of the Soviet harvest but provided 38% of the deliveries, and in 1931 it made 42% of the deliveries. Yet the Ukrainian harvest fell from 23.9 million tons to 18.3 million tons in 1931, but the previous year's quota of 7.7 million tons remained. Authorities were able to procure only 7.2 million tons, and in 1932 just 4.3 million tons of a reduced quota of 6.6 million tons. Between January and mid April 1933 a factor contributing to a surge of deaths within certain region of Ukraine during the period was the relentless search for "hidden grain" by the confiscation of all food stuffs from certain households, which Joseph 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. In his review of Anne Applebaum's book Mark Tauger gives a rough estimate of those affected by the search for hidden grain reserves: "In chapter 10 Applebaum describes the harsh searches that local personnel, often Ukrainian, imposed on villages, based on a Ukrainian memoir collection (222), and she presents many vivid anecdotes. Still she never explains how many people these actions affected. She cites a Ukrainian decree from November 1932 calling for 1100 brigades to be formed (229). If each of these 1100 brigades searched 100 households, and a peasant household had five people, then they took food from 550,000 people, out of 20 million, or about 2-3 percent."

Confiscation of reserve funds

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."

Criminalization of gleaning

Gleaning Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. It is a practice described in the Hebrew Bible that became a legall ...

is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or from fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. Some ancient cultures promoted gleaning as an early form of a welfare system. In the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, people who gleaned and distributed food brought themselves under legal risk. The Law of Spikelets criminalised gleaning under penalty of death, or ten years of forced labour in exceptional circumstances. Some sources say there were several legislative acts adopted in order to force starvation in the Ukrainian SSR. On 7 August 1932, the Soviet government passed a law, "On the Safekeeping of Socialist Property",Konchalovsky and Lipkov, The Inner Circle,

Newmarket Press Newmarket Publishing and Communications Company, and its publishing arm Newmarket Press, was founded in 1981 by President and Publisher Esther Margolis. Newmarket published about 20-30 mainly non-fiction books a year, primarily in the areas of chi ...

, New York: 1991, p.54 that imposed penalties starting at a ten-year prison sentence and up to the death penalty for any theft of socialist property.Potocki, p. 320.Serczyk, p. 311.Andrew Gregorovich
"Genocide in Ukraine 1933", part 4: "How Did Stalin Organize the Genocide?"
, Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre, Toronto 1998. Stalin personally appended the stipulation: "People who encroach on socialist property should be considered

enemies of the people The term enemy of the people or enemy of the nation, is a designation for the political or class opponents of the subgroup in power within a larger group. The term implies that by opposing the ruling subgroup, the "enemies" in question are ac ...

." Within the first five months of passage of the law, 54,645 individuals had been imprisoned under it, and 2,110 sentenced to death. The initial wording of the decree, "On fought with speculation", adopted 22 August 1932, led to common situations where minor acts such as bartering tobacco for bread were documented as punished by 5 years imprisonment. After 1934, by NKVD demand, the penalty for minor offenses was limited to a fine of 500

ruble The ruble (American English) or rouble (Commonwealth English) (; rus, рубль, p=rublʲ) is the currency unit of Belarus and Russia. Historically, it was the currency of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. , currencies named ''rub ...

s or three months of correctional labor. The scope of this law, colloquially dubbed the " law of the wheat ears", included even the smallest appropriation of grain by peasants for personal use. A little over a month later, the law was revised, as

Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states. Names The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian ''Politbyuro'' (), itself a contracti ...

kolkhoz A kolkhoz ( rus, колхо́з, a=ru-kolkhoz.ogg, p=kɐlˈxos) was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz., a contraction of советское хозяйство, soviet ownership or ...

'' property and grain would be sentenced to ten years; the death penalty would be imposed only for "systematic theft of grain, sugar beets, animals, etc."Davies and Wheatcroft, pp.167-168, 198-203 Soviet expectations for the 1932 grain crop were high because of Ukraine's bumper crop the previous year, which Soviet authorities believed were sustainable. When it became clear that the 1932 grain deliveries were not going to meet the expectations of the government, the decreased agricultural output was first blamed on the kulaks, and later on agents and spies of foreign intelligence services, "nationalists", " Petlurovites", and from 1937 on,

Trotskyists Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a re ...

. According to a report from the head of the Supreme Court, by 15 January 1933 as many as 103,000 people (more than 14 thousand in the Ukrainian SSR) had been sentenced under the provisions of the 7 August decree. Of the 79,000 whose sentences were known to the Supreme Court, 4,880 had been sentenced to death, 26,086 to ten years of imprisonment, and 48,094 to other punishments. On 8 November, Molotov and Stalin issued an order stating, "from today the dispatch of goods for the villages of all regions of Ukraine shall cease until kolkhozy and individual peasants begin to honestly and conscientiously fulfill their duty to the working class and the Red Army by delivering grain."Davies and Wheatcroft, p. 174. On 24 November, the Politburo ordered that all those sentenced to confinement of three years or more in Ukraine be deported to labor camps. It also simplified procedures for confirming death sentences in Ukraine. The Politburo also dispatched Balytsky to Ukraine for six months with the full powers of the

OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...

.Davies and Wheatcroft, p. 175.

Blacklist system

Blackboard - punishment of kolhoz during Holodomor in Ukraine

In certain collective farms, villages, and

raion A raion (also spelt rayon) is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet states. The term is used for both a type of subnational entity and a division of a city. The word is from the French (meaning 'honeycomb, department'), and is c ...

s (districts) the Soviets imposed a blacklist regime (the or "

black board A blackboard (also known as a chalkboard) is a reusable writing surface on which text or drawings are made with sticks of calcium sulphate or calcium carbonate, known, when used for this purpose, as chalk. Blackboards were originally made of ...

") consisting of economic sanctions and a blockade by

units which led to complete extermination by starvation in many of them. This was formalized in 1932 by the 20 November decree "The Struggle against Kurkul Influence in Collective Farms". The blacklist was applied with harsher methods to selected villages and kolkhozes that were considered to be "underperforming" in the grain collection procurement: "Immediate cessation of delivery of goods, complete suspension of cooperative and state trade in the villages, and removal of all available goods from cooperative and state stores. Full prohibition of collective farm trade for both collective farms and collective farmers, and for private farmers. Cessation of any sort of credit and demand for early repayment of credit and other financial obligations."Rajca, p. 321.Memorandum on Grain Problem
Addendum to the minutes of Politburo eetingNo. 93. Resolution on blacklisting villages. December 1932 Initially, such sanctions were applied to only six villages, but later they were applied to numerous rural settlements and districts. For peasants, who were not kolkhoz members and who were "underperforming" in the grain collection procurement, special measures were adopted. To reach the grain procurement quota amongst peasants, 1,100 brigades were organized, which consisted of activists, often from neighbouring villages, who had either already accomplished their grain procurement quota or were close to accomplishing it. In the end at least 400 collective farms were put on the "black board", more than half of them in

Dnepropetrovsk Dnipro, previously called Dnipropetrovsk from 1926 until May 2016, is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper Rive ...

alone. Since most of the goods supplied to the rural areas were commercial (fabrics, matches, fuels) and sometimes obtained by villagers from neighbouring cities or railway stations, sanctioned villages remained thus for a long period—as an example mentioned in the 6 December decree, the village of Kamyani Potoky was removed from blacklist on 17 October 1933, when they completed their plan for grain collection early. After January 1933, the blacklist regime was modified, with 100% plan execution no longer required. As mentioned in the 6 December Decree, the villages Liutenky and Havrylivka were removed from the black list after 88% and 70% plan completion, respectively. Measures were taken to persecute those withholding or bargaining grain. This was done frequently by requisition detachments, which raided farms to collect grain, and regardless of whether or not the peasants retained enough grain to feed themselves or enough seed left to plant the next harvest. In the end 37 out of 392 districts along with at least 400 collective farms where put on the "black board" in Ukraine, more than half of the blacklisted farms being in

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Dnipropetrovsk Oblast ( uk, Дніпропетро́вська о́бласть, translit=Dnipropetrovska oblast), also referred to as Dnipropetrovshchyna ( uk, Дніпропетро́вщина), is an oblast (province) of central-eastern Ukr ...

alone. 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 the

Zaporizhian Cossacks The Zaporozhian Cossacks, Zaporozhian Cossack Army, Zaporozhian Host, (, or uk, Військо Запорізьке, translit=Viisko Zaporizke, translit-std=ungegn, label=none) or simply Zaporozhians ( uk, Запорожці, translit=Zaporoz ...

. Cossack villages were also blacklisted in the Volga and Kuban regions of Russia. In 1932, 32 (out of less than 200) districts in Kazakhstan that did not meet grain production quotas were blacklisted. Some blacklisted areas in

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine.

could have death rates exceeding 40% while in other areas such as Vinnytsia blacklisting had no particular effect on mortality. The only blacklisted district in the Stalino oblast had a mortality rate that was roughly 2 to 3 times higher than most of the oblast with only 2 districts in the oblast having a comparable death rate.

Restrictions on freedom of movement

Some sources state that Ukrainian SSR borders were sealed by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

and the army in order to prevent starving peasants from travelling into territories where food was more available. Some researchers believe these measures extended to urban areas inside Ukrainian SSR. During the

first five-year plan The first five-year plan (russian: I пятилетний план, ) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a list of economic goals, created by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, based on his policy of socialism in ...

, urban population growth brought more than 10 million people from villages to cities; the number receiving food rations increased from 25 million in 1930 to 40 million in 1932. Food production declined and urban food supplies fell drastically. Reserves did not keep pace with ration requirements. Desertion of factories, combined with peasants' flight from collective farms, resulted in millions of people moving around the country. In response, the government revived the tsarist institution of internal passports at the end of 1932Mark B. Tauger, The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933, ''

Slavic Review The ''Slavic Review'' is a major peer-reviewed academic journal publishing scholarly studies, book and film reviews, and review essays in all disciplines concerned with Russia, Central Eurasia, and Eastern and Central Europe. The journal's tit ...

'', Volume 50, Issue 1 (Spring, 1991), 70-89,
PDF
) Forced collectivization USSR

Special barricades were set up by

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

units throughout the Soviet Union to prevent an exodus of peasants from hunger-stricken regions. During a single month in 1933, 219,460 people were either intercepted and escorted back or arrested and sentenced.Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski,

, ''

: Crimes, Terror, Repression'',

, 1999. In Ukraine, these measures had the following results, according to the declassified documents: During the 11 days (23 January – 2 February) after the 22 January 1933 decree, 3,861 people were intercepted, of which 340 were arrested "for further recognition". During the same period, there were 16,773 people intercepted (907 of those not living in Ukraine) in trains and at railway stations on the whole Ukrainian territory; out of those, 1,610 people were arrested. These figures also included criminals. In the same document, the GPU states that 94,433 peasants had already left the Ukrainian territory during the period from 15 December 1932 to 2 January 1933 (data for 215 districts out of 484, and Moldavian ASRR). 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 a

crime against humanity Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...

.Michael Ellman

Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33 Revisited
''Europe-Asia Studies'',

Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...

. Vol. 59, No. 4, June 2007, 663-693.

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

file In contrast historian

argues that the sealing of the Ukrainian borders caused by the internal passport system was in order to prevent the spread of famine related diseases. The government introduced new identity papers and obligatory registration for citizens in December 1932. Initially, the area of new identity papers and obligatory registration implementation was limited to Moscow, Leningrad (encircling 100 km), and

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine.

(encircling 50 km), and the new measures were planned for implementation by June 1933. In Ukraine, introduction of the passport system was to be carried out by the end of 1933, with top priority given to its enforcement in Kharkiv, Kiev, and Odessa. Travel from Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus

Kuban Kuban ( Russian and Ukrainian: Кубань; ady, Пшызэ) is a historical and geographical region of Southern Russia surrounding the Kuban River, on the Black Sea between the Don Steppe, the Volga Delta and the Caucasus, and separated ...

''kray'' region was specifically forbidden by the directives of 22 January 1933 (signed by Molotov and Stalin) and of 23 January 1933 (joint directive

Central Committee of the Communist Party Central committee is the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, of both ruling and nonruling parties of former and existing socialist states. In such party organizations, the ...

and Sovnarkom). 16 February 1933, the same measures were applied to the Lower-Volga region. After February, the directives stated that travel "for bread" from these areas was organized by enemies of the Soviet Union, with the purpose of agitation in northern areas of the Soviet Union against kolkhozes, but was not prevented. Therefore, railway tickets were to be sold only by ''

ispolkom The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, commonly known as the Ispolkom (russian: исполком, исполнительный комитет, literally " executive committee") was a self-appointed executive committee of the Petrograd So ...

'' permits, and those who had already reached the north should be arrested.

Information blockade

Some sources state that the Soviet regime, by preventing news of the famine from reaching the outside world, prevented foreign sources from providing aid to alleviate the famine and associated hardships. Some say the same thing happened during the earlier 1921–23 famine in the Soviet Union. With regard to the earlier famine, some researchers comments that initial Soviet pleas for aid in early autumn 1921 were refused by European countries, and what aid was eventually provided did not come for four or five months, so the Soviet government may not have expected the outside world to be very helpful in this instance either. On 23 February 1933, the Politburo of Central Committee adopted a decree requiring foreign journalists to seek travel permits from the General Directorate of Militia before entering the affected areas. Also, the Soviet government denied initial reports of the famine but agreed with information about malnutrition, while preventing foreign journalists from travelling in the region. At the same time, there was no credible evidence of information blockade arrangements on a considerable number of foreign specialists, such as engineers, who worked at construction sites at Ukrainian territory. For example, Gareth Jones, one of

David Lloyd George David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was a Liberal Party (United Kingdom), Liberal Party politician from Wales, known for lea ...

's private secretaries, spent several days in mid-March travelling to "all twenty villages, not only in Ukraine, but also in the black earth district, and in the Moscow region, and ... I slept in peasants' cottages, and did not immediately leave for the next village." He reached the neighbouring rural area of Kharkiv (the capital of Soviet Ukraine), spent some days there, and despite seeing no dead people or animals himself, reported "that there was famine in the Soviet Union." On 23 August 1933, foreign correspondents were warned individually by the press section of the Foreign Office of the Soviet Union not to attempt to travel to the provinces or elsewhere in the Soviet Union without first obtaining formal permission. The Foreign Office of the Soviet Union, without explanation, refused permission to William H. Chamberlain, ''

The Christian Science Monitor ''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...

'' correspondent, to visit and observe the harvest in the principal agricultural regions of the

North Caucasus The North Caucasus, ( ady, Темыр Къафкъас, Temır Qafqas; kbd, Ишхъэрэ Къаукъаз, İṩxhərə Qauqaz; ce, Къилбаседа Кавказ, Q̇ilbaseda Kavkaz; , os, Цӕгат Кавказ, Cægat Kavkaz, inh, ...

and Ukraine. From May–July 1933, two other American correspondents were forbidden to make a trip to Ukraine. Such restrictions were softened in September 1933. Scholars who have conducted research in declassified archives have reported "the Politburo and regional Party committees insisted that immediate and decisive action be taken in response to the famine such that 'conscientious farmers' not suffer, while district Party committees were instructed to supply every child with milk and decreed that those who failed to mobilize resources to feed the hungry or denied hospitalization to famine victims be prosecuted."Davies and Wheatcroft, p. 424 By the end of 1933, based on data collected by undercover investigation and photos, the

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

Cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **'' Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **'' Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, t ...

Theodor Innitzer Theodor Innitzer (25 December 1875 – 9 October 1955) was Archbishop of Vienna and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. Early life Innitzer was born in Neugeschrei (Nové Zvolání), part of the town Weipert (Vejprty) in Bohemia, at that time ...

began an awareness-raising campaign in the

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

about the massive deaths by hunger and occasional cases of

cannibalism Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, b ...

that were occurring in Ukraine and the North Caucasus at that time.

Refusal to provide aid

Some sources say that, despite the pleas for assistance and the acknowledged famine situation, the Moscow authorities refused to provide aid. For example, Snyder writes that Stalin had privately admitted that while there was famine in Soviet Ukraine, he did not grant the Ukrainian party leadership's request for food aid. Some researchers state that aid was provided only during the summer. The first reports regarding malnutrition and hunger in rural areas and towns (which were undersupplied through the recently introduced rationing system) to the Ukrainian GPU and ''oblast'' authorities are dated to mid-January 1933; however, the first food aid sent by Central Soviet authorities for the Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk regions 400 thousand

pood ''Pood'' ( rus, пуд, r=pud, p=put, plural: or ) is a unit of mass equal to 40 ''funt'' (, Russian pound). Since 1899 it is set to approximately 16.38 kilograms (36.11 pounds). It was used in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. ''Pood'' was first m ...

s (6,600

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...

s, 200 thousand poods or 3,300 tonnes for each) appeared as early as 7 February 1933. Measures were introduced to localize these cases using locally available resources. While the numbers of such reports increased, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine issued a decree on 8 February 1933, that urged every "hunger case" to be treated without delay and with a maximum mobilization of resources by ''kolkhozes'', ''raions'', towns, and oblasts. The decree set a seven-day term for food aid which was to be provided from "central sources". On 20 February 1933, the Dnipropetrovsk oblast received 1.2 million poods of food aid, Odessa received 800 thousand, and Kharkiv received 300 thousand. The Kiev oblast was allocated 6 million poods by 18 March The Ukrainian authorities also provided aid, but it was limited by available resources. In order to assist orphaned children, the Ukrainian GPU and People's Commissariat for Health created a special commission, which established a network of kindergartens where children could get food. Urban areas affected by food shortage adhered to a rationing system. On 20 March 1933, Stalin signed a decree which lowered the monthly milling levy in Ukraine by 14 thousand tons, which was to be redistributed as an additional bread supply "for students, small towns and small enterprises in large cities and specially in Kiev." However, food aid distribution was not managed effectively and was poorly redistributed by regional and local authorities. After the first wave of hunger in February and March, Ukrainian authorities met with a second wave of hunger and starvation in April and May, specifically in the

Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Ky ...

and

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine.

oblasts. The situation was aggravated by the extended winter. Between February and June 1933, thirty-five Politburo decisions and Sovnarkom decrees authorized the issue of a total of 35.19 million poods (576,400 tonnes), or more than half of total aid to Soviet agriculture as a whole. 1.1 million tonnes were provided by Central Soviet authorities in winter and spring 1933 — grain and seeds for Ukrainian SSR peasants,

kolhoz A kolkhoz ( rus, колхо́з, a=ru-kolkhoz.ogg, p=kɐlˈxos) was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz., a contraction of советское хозяйство, soviet ownership or ...

es and '' sovhozes''. Such figures did not include grain and flour aid provided for the urban population and children, or aid from local sources. In Russia, Stalin personally authorized distribution of aid in answer to a request by Sholokhov, whose own district was stricken.On 6 April 1933, Sholokhov, who lived in the Vesenskii district (Kuban, Russian Federation), wrote at length to Stalin, describing the famine conditions and urging him to provide grain. Stalin received the letter on 15 April, and on 16 April the Politburo granted 700 tons of grain to that district. Stalin sent a telegram to Sholokhov stating "We will do everything required. Inform size of necessary help. State a figure." Sholokhov replied on the same day, and on 22 April, the day on which Stalin received the second letter, Stalin scolded him, "You should have sent your answer not by letter but by telegram. Time was wasted". Davies and Wheatcroft, p. 217 However, Stalin also later reprimanded Sholokhov for failing to recognize "sabotage" within his district. This was the only instance that a specific amount of aid was given to a specific district. Other appeals were not successful, and many desperate pleas were cut back or rejected.Davies and Wheatcroft, p. 218 Documents from Soviet archives indicate that the aid distribution was made selectively to the most affected areas, and during the spring months, such assistance was the goal of the relief effort. A special resolution of the Central Committee of the

Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine The Communist Party of Ukraine ( uk, Комуністична Партія України ''Komunistychna Partiya Ukrayiny'', КПУ, ''KPU''; russian: Коммунистическая партия Украины) was the founding and ruling ...

for the

Kiev Oblast Kyiv Oblast ( uk, Ки́ївська о́бласть, translit=Kyïvska oblast), also called Kyivshchyna ( uk, Ки́ївщина), is an oblast (province) in central and northern Ukraine. It surrounds, but does not include, the city of Kyiv, w ...

, from 31 March 1933, ordered peasants to be hospitalized with either ailing or recovering patients. The resolution ordered improved nutrition within the limits of available resources so that they could be sent out into the fields to sow the new crop as soon as possible.CC C(b)PU resolution cited through

,
Why did Stalin exterminate the Ukrainians?
", ''

'', 29 November 200

doc # 204 The food was dispensed according to special resolutions from government bodies, and additional food was given in the field where the laborers worked. The last CPSU Politburo decision about food aid to the whole of the Ukrainian SSR was issued on 13 June 1933. Separate orders about food aid for regions of Ukraine appeared by the end of June through early July 1933 for the

Dnipropetrovsk Dnipro, previously called Dnipropetrovsk from 1926 until May 2016, is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper Rive ...

, Vinnytsia and

regions. For the kolkhozes of the

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine.

region, assistance was provided by end of July 1933 (Politburo decision dated 20 July 1933). What aid was given was selectively distributed to preserve the collective farm system. Grain producing oblasts in Ukraine such as

were given more aid at an earlier time than more severely affected regions like

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine.

which produced less grain.

had quoted

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

during the famine declaring: "

He who does not work, neither shall he eat He who does not work, neither shall he eat is a New Testament aphorism traditionally attributed to Paul the Apostle, later cited by John Smith in the early 1600s colony of Jamestown, Virginia, and by the Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin ...

." This perspective is argued by Michael Ellman to 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).

Export of grain and other food

After recognition of the famine situation in Ukraine during the drought and poor harvests, the Soviet government in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

continued to export grain rather than retain its crop to feed the people, though at a lower rate than in previous years. In 1930–31, there had been 5,832,000 metric tons of grains exported. In 1931–1932, grain exports declined to 4,786,000 metric tons. In 1932–1933, grain exports were just 1,607,000 metric tons, and in 1933–34, this further declined to 1,441,000 metric tons.Davies and Wheatcroft, p.471 Officially published data differed slightly: ; Cereals (in tonnes): * 1930 – 4,846,024 * 1931 – 5,182,835 * 1932 – 1,819,114 (~750,000 during the first half of 1932; from late April ~157,000 tonnes of grain was also imported) * 1933 – 1,771,364 (~220,000 during the first half of 1933; from late March grain was also imported) ; Only wheat (in tonnes): * 1930 – 2,530,953 * 1931 – 2,498,958 * 1932 – 550,917 * 1933 – 748,248 In 1932, via Ukrainian commercial ports the following amounts were exported: 988,300 tons of grains and 16,500 tons of other types of cereals. In 1933, the totals were: 809,600 tons of grains, 2,600 tons of other cereals, 3,500 tons of meat, 400 tons of butter, and 2,500 tons of fish. Those same ports imported the following amounts: less than 67,200 tons of grains and cereals in 1932, and 8,600 tons of grains in 1933. The following amounts were received from other Soviet ports: in 1932, 164,000 tons of grains, 7,300 tons of other cereals, 31,500 tons of , and no more than 177,000 tons of meat and butter; in 1933, 230,000 tons of grains, 15,300 tons if other cereals, 100 tons of meat, 900 tons of butter, and 34,300 tons of fish. Michael Ellman states 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.

Elimination of Ukrainian cultural elite

Coiner of the term

Raphael Lemkin Raphael Lemkin ( pl, Rafał Lemkin; 24 June 1900 – 28 August 1959) was a Polish lawyer who is best known for coining the term ''genocide'' and initiating the Genocide Convention, an interest spurred on after learning about the Armenian genocid ...

considered the repression of the Orthodox Church to be a prong of

against 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 Autocephalist

parishes A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...

in 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 of Ivan Pavlovskyi yet purges of the Church reignited during the

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...

. Changes in cultural politics also occurred. An early example was the 1930

show trial A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so ...

of the "Union for the Freedom of Ukraine" at which 45 intellectuals, higher education professors, writers, a theologian and a priest were publicly prosecuted in

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine.

, then capital of Soviet Ukraine. Fifteen of the accused were executed, many more with links to the defendants (248) were sent to the camps. (This was one of a series of contemporary

s, held in the North Caucasus, 1929 in Shakhty, and in Moscow, the 1930 Industrial Party Trial and the

1931 Menshevik Trial The Menshevik Trial was one of the early purges carried out by Stalin in which 14 economists, who were former members of the Menshevik party, were put on trial and convicted for trying to re-establish their party as the "Union Bureau of the Menshev ...

.) The total number is not known, but tens of thousands of people are estimated to have been arrested, exiled, and/or executed during and after the trial including 30,000 intellectuals, writers, teachers, and scientists. In this vein the secretary of the Kharkiv Oblast referred to "bourgeois-nationalistic rabble" as "class enemies" near the end of the famine. 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 lead to 719 executions, 8,003 people being sent to

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= ...

camps, 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 "class hostile" elements. Pavel Postyshev was set in charge of placing people in the head of Machine-Tractor Stations in Ukraine which were responsible for purging "class hostile elements." 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. By the end of the 1930s, approximately four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite had been eliminated. Some, like Ukrainian writer

Mykola Khvylovy Mykola Khvylovy ( ; – May 13, 1933) (who also used the pseudonyms "Yuliya Umanets", "Stefan Karol", and "Dyadko Mykola") was a Ukrainian novelist, poet, publicist, and political activist, one of the founders of post-revolutionary Ukrain ...

, committed suicide. One of the leading Ukrainian Bolsheviks,

Mykola Skrypnyk Mykola Oleksiiovych Skrypnyk ( uk, Микола Олексійович Скрипник; – 7 July 1933), also known as Nikolai Alekseyevich Skripnik (russian: Никола́й Алексе́евич Скри́пник), was a Ukrainian Bolshe ...

, who was in charge of the decade-long

Ukrainization Ukrainization (also spelled Ukrainisation), sometimes referred to as Ukrainianization (or Ukrainianisation) is a policy or practice of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of ...

program that had been decisively brought to an end, shot himself in the summer of 1933 at the height of the purge of the CP(b)U. Whole academic organizations, such as the Bahaliy Institute of History and Culture, were shut down following the arrests. Repression of the intelligentsia occurred in virtually all parts of the Soviet Union. Despite the assault, education and publishing in the republic remained Ukrainianized for years afterward. In 1935–36, 83% of all school children in the Ukrainian SSR were taught in Ukrainian, with Ukrainians making up about 80% of the population. In 1936, of 1830 newspapers, 1402 were in Ukrainian, as were 177 magazines, and in 1936, 69 thousand Ukrainian books were printed. The recent award-winning documentary ''Genocide Revealed'' (2011), by Canadian-Ukrainian director Yurij Luhovy, presents evidence for the view that Stalin and his cohorts in the Communist regime (not necessarily the Russian people as a whole) deliberately targeted Ukrainians in the mass starvation of 1932–1933. Stalin's regime proceeded to eliminate the

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...

of Ukraine, to forcibly deport Ukrainian

Kulak Kulak (; russian: кула́к, r=kulák, p=kʊˈlak, a=Ru-кулак.ogg; plural: кулаки́, ''kulakí'', 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), also kurkul () or golchomag (, plural: ), was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned ove ...

s who opposed its collectivization policies, and to orchestrate a deliberate mass starvation by hunger of Ukrainians, wherever they were found throughout the Soviet Empire. This documentary reinforces the view that the Holodomor was indeed an act of genocide.

Consequence of collectivization

While a complex task, it is possible to group some of the causes that contributed to the Holodomor. They have to be understood in the larger context of Stalin's "social revolution from above" that took place in the

at the time.С. Кульчицький, Проблема колективізації сільського господарства в сталінській "революції зверху", 2004. (S. Kulchytskyi, The problem of agricultural collectivization in Stalin's "revolution from above", 2004
Archived from the original(in Ukrainian)Google automated English translation PDF, 15 August 2019
''Проблеми Історіїї України факти, судження, пошуки'', №12, 2004, сс. 21–69. (''Problems of the History of Ukraine: Facts, Judgments, Quests'', #12, 2004, p. 21–69.)

Agrotechnological failures

Historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft lists four problems Soviet authorities ignored that would hinder the advancement of agricultural technology and ultimately contributed to the famine: * "Over-extension of the sown area" — Crops yields were reduced and likely some plant disease caused by the planting of future harvests across a wider area of land without rejuvenating soil leading to the reduction of fallow land. * "Decline in draught power" — the over extraction of grain lead to the loss of food for farm animals, which in turn reduced the effectiveness of agricultural operations. * "Quality of cultivation" — the planting and extracting of the harvest, along with ploughing was done in a poor manner due to inexperienced and demoralized workers and the aforementioned lack of draught power. * "The poor weather" — drought and other poor weather conditions were largely ignored by Soviet authorities who gambled on good weather and believed agricultural difficulties would be overcome.

Collectivization

Approaches to changing from individual farming to a collective type of agricultural production had existed since 1917, but for various reasons (lack of

agricultural equipment Agricultural machinery relates to the mechanical structures and devices used in farming or other agriculture. There are many types of such equipment, from hand tools and power tools to tractors and the countless kinds of farm implements that they ...

, agronomy resources, etc.) were not implemented widely until 1925, when there was a more intensive effort by the agricultural sector to increase the number of agricultural cooperatives and bolster the effectiveness of already existing

sovkhoz A sovkhoz ( rus, совхо́з, p=sɐfˈxos, a=ru-sovkhoz.ogg, abbreviated from ''советское хозяйство'', "sovetskoye khozyaystvo (sovkhoz)"; ) was a form of state-owned farm in the Soviet Union. It is usually contrasted wit ...

es. In late 1927, after the XV Congress of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union " Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspape ...

, then known as the All-Union Communist Party (

bolsheviks The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

), a significant impetus was given to the collectivization effort. In 1927, a

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

shortened the harvest in southern areas of the Ukrainian SSR and

. In 1927–1928, the winter tillage area was badly affected due to low snow levels. Despite seed aid from the State, many affected areas were not re-sown. The 1928 harvest was affected by drought in most of the grain producing areas of the Ukrainian SSR. Shortages in the harvest and difficulties with the supply system created difficulties with the food supply in urban areas and destabilized the food supply situation in the USSR in general. In order to alleviate the situation, a system of food

rationing Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, services, or an artificial restriction of demand. Rationing controls the size of the ration, which is one's allowed portion of the resources being distributed on a particular ...

was initially implemented in

Odessa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...

in the second quarter of 1928, and later spread to

Mariupol Mariupol (, ; uk, Маріу́поль ; russian: Мариу́поль) is a city in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. It is situated on the northern coast ( Pryazovia) of the Sea of Azov, at the mouth of the Kalmius River. Prior to the 2022 Russia ...

Kherson Kherson (, ) is a port city of Ukraine that serves as the administrative centre of Kherson Oblast. Located on the Black Sea and on the Dnieper River, Kherson is the home of a major ship-building industry and is a regional economic centre. I ...

, Dniprelstan (

), and

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine.

. At the beginning of 1929, a similar system was implemented throughout the Soviet Union. Despite the aid from the Soviet Ukrainian and Central governments, many southern rural areas registered occurrences of malnutrition and in some cases hunger and starvation (the affected areas and thus the amount of required food aid was under-counted by authorities). There was also a shortage of forage

livestock Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to ani ...

. Most of

Kolkhoz A kolkhoz ( rus, колхо́з, a=ru-kolkhoz.ogg, p=kɐlˈxos) was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz., a contraction of советское хозяйство, soviet ownership or ...

es and recently refurnished

es went through these years with few losses, and some were even able to provide assistance to peasants in the more affected areas (seed and grain for food). Despite the intense state campaign, the collectivization, which was initially voluntary, was not popular amongst peasants: as of early 1929, only 5.6% of Ukrainian peasant households and 3.8% of

arable land Arable land (from the la, arabilis, "able to be ploughed") is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "arable, ''adj''. and ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013. Alternatively, for th ...

were ''collectivized''. In early 1929, the methods employed by the specially empowered authority ''UkrKolhozcenter'' changed from a voluntary enrollment to an administrative one. By 1 October 1929, a plan for the creation of kolkhozes was "outperformed" by 239%. As a result, 8.8% of arable land was collectivized. The next major step toward "all-over collectivization" took place after an article was published by Stalin in ''

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the ...

'' in early November 1929. While initiated by a 10 November–17 meeting of Communist Party Central Committee '' Twenty-Five Thousanders'' only trained at special short courses, the main driving force of collectivization and

dekulakization Dekulakization (russian: раскулачивание, ''raskulachivanie''; uk, розкуркулення, ''rozkurkulennia'') was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, or executions of millions of kul ...

in Ukraine became a "poor peasants committee" (''komnezamy'') and local village councils (''silrady'') where komnezams members had a voting majority. The USSR Kolhozcenter issued the 10 December 1929, decree on collectivization of livestock within a three-month period (draft animals 100%, cattle 100%, pigs 80%, sheep and goats 60%). This drove many peasants to slaughter their livestock. By 1 January 1930, the percentage of collectivized households almost doubled to 16.4%. Despite the infamous 5 January 1930 decree, in which the deadline for the complete collectivization of the Ukrainian SSR was set for the period from the end of 1931 to spring 1932, the authorities decided to accelerate the completion of the campaign in autumn 1930. The high expectations of the plan were outperformed by local authorities even without the assistance of the 7,500 Twenty-Five Thousanders, and by March, 70.9% of arable land and 62.8% of peasant households were collectivized. The dekulakization plan also "over-performed". The first stage of dekulakization lasted from second half of January until the beginning of March 1930. Such measures were applied to 309 out of 581 total districts of Ukrainian SSR, which accounted for 2,524,000 of 5,054,000 peasant households. As of 10 March, 61,897 peasants households (2.5%) were ''dekulakized'', while in 1929, the percentage of dekulakized households was 1.4%.Н. Бем, Ставлення україньского селянства до ликвидації куркульства як класу та суцільної колективізації сільського господарства (1930-1931 рр.)
pdf
, ''Проблеми Історіїї України факти, судження, пошуки''
№9
2003, сс. 227-243, see p. 230-231 Some of the peasants and "weak elements" were arrested and deported "to the north". Many arrested ''kulaks'' and "well-to-do" farmers resettled their families to the

and

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the fo ...

. The term ''kulak'' was ultimately applied to anybody resisting collectivization as many of the so-called kulaks were no more well-off than other peasants. The fast-track to collectivization incited numerous peasant revolts in Ukraine and in other parts of the Soviet Union. In response to the situation, ''Pravda'' published Stalin's article "Dizzy with success", which blamed overeager Party members and declared that "collective farms must not be established by force". Soon, numerous orders and decrees were issued banning the use of force and administrative methods. Some of those dekulakized were declared to have been labeled mistakenly and received their property back, and some returned home. As a result, the collectivization process was rolled back. On 1 May 1933, 38.2% of Ukrainian SSR peasant households and 41.1% of arable land had been collectivized—by the end of August these numbers declined to 29.2% and 35.6% respectively. A second forced-voluntary collectivization campaign was initiated in the winter of 1931, with significant assistance of the so-called tug-brigades composed of kolkhoz '' udarniks''. Many kulaks, along with their families, were deported from the Ukrainian SSR. According to declassified data, around 300,000 peasants in Ukraine were affected by these policies in 1930–1931. Ukrainians composed 15% of the total 1.8 million kulaks relocated Soviet-wide.Davies and Wheatcroft, p.490 Beginning in summer 1931, all further deportations were recommended to be administered only to individuals. This second forced-voluntary collectivization campaign also caused a delay in sowing. During winter and spring 1930–1931, the Ukrainian agricultural authority ''Narkomzem'' issued several reports about the significant decline of livestock caused by poor treatment, the absence of

forage Forage is a plant material (mainly plant leaves and stems) eaten by grazing livestock. Historically, the term ''forage'' has meant only plants eaten by the animals directly as pasture, crop residue, or immature cereal crops, but it is also use ...

, stables, and farms, and "kulak sabotage". According to the

, Ukrainian agriculture was to switch from an exclusive orientation of grain to a more diverse output. This included not only an increase in

sugar beet A sugar beet is a plant whose root contains a high concentration of sucrose and which is grown commercially for sugar production. In plant breeding, it is known as the Altissima cultivar group of the common beet ('' Beta vulgaris''). Together ...

crops; other types of agricultural production were expected to be utilized by industry, including cotton, which was established in 1931. This plan anticipated a decrease in grain area and an increase of yield and area for other crops. By 1 July 1931, 65.7% of Ukrainian SSR peasant households and 67.2% of arable land were reported as collectivized, while the main grain and sugar beet production areas were collectivized at levels of 80–90%. The decree of Central Committee of the Communist Party on 2 August 1931 clarified the all-over collectivization term—in order to be considered complete, the all-over collectivization did not have to reach 100%, but could not be less than 68-70% of peasants households and 75-80% of arable lands. According to the same decree, all-over collectivization was accomplished in the following areas: Northern Caucasus (Kuban), with 88% of households and 92% of arable lands collectivized; Ukraine (South), with 85% and 94% respectively; Ukraine (Right Bank), with 69% and 80%; and Moldavian ASRR (part of Ukrainian SRR), with 68% and 75%. As of the beginning of October 1931, the collectivization of 68% of peasant households, and 72% of arable land was complete.С.В. Кульчицький, Опір селянства суцільній колективізації
pdf
, ''

Ukrainian Historical Journal Institute of History of Ukraine is a research institute in Ukraine that is part of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine department of history, philosophy and law and studies a wide spectrum of problems in history of Ukraine. The institute i ...

'', 2004
№ 2
31-50. plan1932UKRSSR

The plan for the state grain collection in the Ukrainian SSR adopted for 1931 was over-optimistic—510 million

s (8.4 Tg). Drought, administrative distribution of the plan for kolkhozes, and the lack of relevant general management destabilized the situation. Significant amounts of grain remained unharvested. A significant percentage was lost during processing and transportation, or spoiled at elevators (wet grain). The total

winter sowing Winter sowing is a method of starting seeds outdoors in winter. This is generally done with seeds that require a period of cold stratification. The method takes advantage of natural temperatures, rather than artificially refrigerating seeds. Win ...

area shrunk by ~2 million hectares. Livestock in kolkhozes remained without forage, which was collected under grain procurement. A similar occurrence happened with respect to seeds and wages awarded to kolhoz members. Grain collection continued until May 1932, but reached only 90% of the planned amounts. By the end of December 1931, the collection plan was 79% accomplished. Many kolkhozes from December 1931 onwards suffered from lack of food, resulting in an increased number of deaths caused by malnutrition, which were registered by OGPU in some areas (Moldavian SSR as a whole and several central rayons of Vinnytsia, Kiev, and North-East rayons of Odessa oblasts) in winter, spring and early summer 1932. By 1932, the sowing campaign of the Ukrainian SSR was implemented with minimal drafht power, as most of the remaining horses were incapable of working, while the number of available agricultural tractors was too small to fill the gap. The government of the Ukrainian SSR tried to remedy the situation, but it had little success. Administrative and territorial reform (oblast creation) in February 1932 also added to the mismanagement. As a result, Moscow had more details about the seed situation than the Ukrainian authorities. In May 1932, in an effort to change the situation, the central Soviet Government provided 7.1 million

s of grain for food for Ukraine and dispatched an additional 700 agricultural tractors originally intended for other regions of the Soviet Union. By July, the total amount of aid provided from Central Soviet Authorities for food, sowing and forage for the agricultural sector totaled more than 17 million poods. Speculative prices of food in the cooperative network (5–10 times more compared to neighbouring Soviet republics) brought significant peasant "travel for bread", while attempts to handle the situation had very limited success. The quota on carried-on foods provision was lifted by Stalin (at Kosior's request) at the end of May 1932. The July GPU reports for the first half of 1932 mentioned the "difficulties with food" in 127 out of 484 rayons and acknowledged the incompleteness of the information for the regions. The decree of Sovnarkom on "Kolkhoz Trade" issued in May fostered rumours amongst peasants that collectivization was rolled back again, as it had been in spring 1930. The number of peasants who abandoned kolkhozes significantly increased. The government plans for the central grain collection in Ukraine was lowered by 18.1% compared to the 1931 plan. Collective farms were still expected to return 132,750 tons of grain, which had been provided in spring 1932 as aid. The grain collection plan for July 1932 was adopted to collect 19.5 million

s. The actual state of collection was disastrous, and by 31 July, only 3 million poods (compared to 21 million in 1931) were collected. As of 20 July, the harvested area was half the 1931 amount. The sovhozes had only sowed 16% of the defined area. Beginning in July 1932, the Ukrainian SSR met with difficulty in supplying the planned amount of food to the rationing system (implemented in early 1928) to supply extensively growing urban areas with food. This system almost became the sole source of food delivery to cities, while the alternatives, cooperative trade and black market trading, became too expensive and undersupplied to provide long-range assistance. By December 1932, due to faulty grain procurement, daily rationing for the rural population was limited to 100–600 grams of bread, with some group of rural citizens completely withdrawn from the rationing supply. This disparity between agricultural goals and actual production grew later in the year. An expected 190 thousand tons of grain were to be exported, but by 27 August 1932, only 20 thousand tons were ready. Taking into account the situation with the harvest at right bank Ukraine, Stalin lowered procurement plan for the Ukrainian SSR by 40 million poods at the end of August 1932. By 25 October, the plan for grain collection was lowered once again. Nevertheless, collection reached only 39% of the annually planned total. A second lowering of goals subtracted 70 million poods but still demanded plan completion and 100% efficiency. Attempts to reach the new goals of production proved futile in late 1932. On 29 November, in order to complete the plan, Ukraine was to collect 94 million poods, 4.8 million of them from sovkhozes. On 2 January, targets were again lowered to 62.5 million poods. On 14 January, the targets were lowered even further to 33.1 million. At the same time, GPU of Ukraine reported hunger and starvation in the

and Vinnytsia oblasts, and began implementing measures to remedy the situation. The total amount of grain collected by 5 February was only 255 million poods (compared to 440 million poods in 1931), while the numbers of "hunger and malnutrition cases" as registered by the GPU of Ukrainian SSR increased every day. Whilst the long-lasting effect of overall collectivization had an adverse effect on agricultural output everywhere, Ukraine had long been the most agriculturally productive area, providing over 50% of exported grain and 25% of total production of grain in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

in 1913. Over , were used for grain production, or 90.5% of total arable land. This degree of dependency on agriculture meant that the effects of a bad harvest could be almost unlimited. This had been long recognized, and while projections for agricultural production were adjusted, the shock of limited production could not be easily managed. While collections by the state were in turn limited, there were already clear stresses. The 1932 total Soviet harvest was to be 29.5 million tons in state collections of grain out of 90.7 million tons in production. But the actual result was a disastrous 55–60 million tons in production. The state ended up collecting only 18.5 million tons in grain.Davies and Wheatcroft, p. 448 The total Soviet collections by the state were virtually the same in 1930 and 1931 at about 22.8 million tons. For 1932, they had been reduced significantly to 18.5 million tons, with even lower figure in Ukraine. These were the total estimated outcomes of the grain harvests:

Peasants' reaction

Another potential factor contributing to the situation in spring 1933 was that the peasants' "incentive to work disappeared" when they worked at "large collective farms". Soviet archival data for 1930–32 also support that conclusion. This is one of the factors for reducing the sowing area in 1932 and for significant losses during harvesting.Mark B. Tauger, Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931–33, ''The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies'', # 1506, 2001, ,
PDF
) By December 1932, 725,000 hectares of grain in areas of Ukrainian SRR affected by famine remained uncollected in spring 1933. A second significant factor was "the massacre of cattle by peasants not wishing to sacrifice their property for nothing to the collective farm." During winter and spring 1930–1931, the Ukrainian agricultural authority ''Narkomzem'' issued several reports about the significant decline of livestock and especially draft power caused by poor treatment, absence of

, stables, and farms, and "kulak sabotage". 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.

Legislation provisions

On 7 August 1932, the Soviet government passed a law, "On the Safekeeping of Socialist Property", that imposed penalties from a ten-year prison sentence up to the death penalty for any theft of socialist property. Stalin personally appended the stipulation: "People who encroach on socialist property should be considered

." Within the first five months of passage of the law, 54,645 individuals had been imprisoned under it, and 2,110 sentenced to death. The initial wording of the decree, "On fought with speculation", adopted 22 August 1932 led to common situations where minor acts such as bartering tobacco for bread were documented as punished by 5 years imprisonment. After 1934, by NKVD demand, the penalty for minor offenses was limited to a fine of 500

protocols revealed that secret decisions had later modified the original decree of 16 September 1932. The Politburo approved a measure that specifically exempted small-scale theft of socialist property from the death penalty, declaring that "organizations and groupings destroying state, social, and co-operate property in an organized manner by fires, explosions and mass destruction of property shall be sentenced to execution without trial", and listed a number of cases in which "kulaks, former traders and other socially-alien persons" would be subject to the death penalty. "Working individual peasants and collective farmers" who stole kolkhoz property and grain should be sentenced to ten years; the death penalty should be imposed only for "systematic theft of grain, sugar beets, animals, etc." Soviet expectations for the 1932 grain crop were high because of Ukraine's bumper crop the previous year, which Soviet authorities believed were sustainable. When it became clear that the 1932 grain deliveries were not going to meet the expectations of the government, the decreased agricultural output was blamed on the kulaks, and later to agents and spies of foreign Intelligence Services—"nationalists", " Petlurovites", and from 1937 on,

. According to a report by the head of the Supreme Court, by 15 January 1933, as many as 103,000 people (more than 14,000 in the Ukrainian SSR) had been sentenced under the provisions of the 7 August decree. Of the 79,000 whose sentences were known to the Supreme Court, 4,880 had been sentenced to death, 26,086 to ten years' imprisonment, and 48,094 to other sentences. On 8 November, Molotov and Stalin issued an order stating "from today the dispatch of goods for the villages ''of all regions of Ukraine'' shall cease until kolkhozy and individual peasants begin to honestly and conscientiously fulfill their duty to the working class and the Red Army by delivering grain." On 24 November, the Politburo instructed that all those sentenced to confinement of three years or more in Ukraine be deported to labor camps. It also simplified procedures for confirming death sentences in Ukraine. The Politburo also dispatched Balytsky to Ukraine for six months with the full powers of the OGPU. The existing practice of administrative punishment known as ''black board'' (

blacklist Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, ...

) by the November, 18 Decree of Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine was applied to a greater extent and with more harsh methods to selected villages and kolkhozes that were considered to be underperforming in the grain collection procurement: "Immediate cessation of delivery of goods, complete suspension of cooperative and state trade in the villages, and removal of all available goods from cooperative and state stores. Full prohibition of collective farm trade for both collective farms and collective farmers, and for private farmers. Cessation of any sort of credit and demand for early repayment of credit and other financial obligations." Initially, such sanctions were applied to only six villages, but later they were applied to numerous rural settlements and districts. For peasants who were not kolkhoz members and who were underperforming in the grain collection procurement, special measures were adopted. To "reach the grain procurement quota" amongst peasants, 1,100 brigades, consisting of activists (often from neighbouring villages) which had accomplished their grain procurement quota or were close to accomplishing it, were organized. Since most of goods supplied to the rural areas were commercial (fabrics, matches, fuels) and sometimes obtained by villagers from neighboured cities or railway stations, sanctioned villages remained so for a long period. As an example mentioned in the 6 December ''Decree'', the village of Kamyani Potoky was removed from blacklist only on 17 October 1933, when they completed their plan for grain collection early. Beginning in January 1933, the black list regime was softened when 100% of plan execution was no longer demanded. The 6 December ''Decree'' stated that the villages Liutenky and Havrylivka were removed from the black list after reaching 88% and 70% plan completion respectively. Measures were undertaken to persecute those withholding or bargaining grain. This was frequently done by requisition detachments, which raided farms to collect grain, and was done regardless of whether the peasants retained enough grain to feed themselves, or whether they had enough seed left to plant the next harvest.

Procurement practice

In 1928, a by contract policy of procurement (contracts for the delivery of agricultural products) was implemented for kolkhozes and ordinary peasants alike (kulaks had a "firm" plan for procurement). Accordingly, from 1928 through January 1933, "grain production areas" were required to submit 1/3 to 1/4 of their estimated yield, while areas designated as grain were required to submit no more than 1/8 of their estimated yield. However, between autumn 1930 and spring 1932, local authorities tended to collect products from kolkhozes in amounts greater than the minimum required, in order to exceed the contracted target, in some cases by more than 200%. Especially harmful methods utilized in the by contract policy were ''counter-plan'' actions, which were additional collection plans implemented in already fulfilled contracts. Such counter-plan measures were strictly forbidden after the Spring of 1933 as "extremely harmful for kolkhoz development."''Soviet Agricultural Encyclopedia'' 1st ed. (1932-35), Moscow In 1932, a " of yield" procurement quota for "grain production areas" of the Ukrainian SSR was planned for implementation. On 23 September 1932, a telegram signed by Molotov and Stalin noted that the harvest of 1932 was "satisfactory", according to estimates provided by the agricultural planning authorities, and therefore requests for seed for winter crops were refused, while total winter tillage acreage demands were increased. Later, Stalin blamed the statistical and planning authorities for inaccurately estimating potential yields and thus a "Commissions for yield estimation" was created on 17 December 1932, by his order.''Soviet Agricultural Encyclopedia'' 2nd ed. (1939), Moscow The 1932 harvest figures provided at the time were largely overestimated, and the actual difference between estimated and actual harvest was significant. Such unrealistic figures resulted in demand that was impossible to fulfil and greater grain procurement than was possible from late 1932 through 5 February 1933.

Natural factors (Pure and Mixed with Human Factors)

Weather and drought

Mark Tauger has suggested that drought and damp weather were causes of the low harvest.PDF version
archived fro
the original
on 24 August 2012. 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.

Plant disease

A 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 may have exacerbated the problem.Davies, Robert W.; Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (2004). The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931–1933. Palgrave Macmillan on page 437… “It was not until the autumn of 1932 that the restoration of proper crop rotation received the strong support of the authorities (see pp. 231–4). Meanwhile, much damage had been done. Such a dramatic expansion of sown area and reduction of fallow, without improved crop rotation and the careful introduction of alternative means for rejuvenating the soil with fertilisers or manure, was bound to lead to the reduction of yields and an increased likelihood of crop diseases. By 1932, in many regions, and particularly in Ukraine, soil exhaustion and crop diseases were widespread.”

Swarms of insects

Mark Tauger suggested swarms of insects also diluted the harvest.

Weed growth

According to Tauger warm and wet weather stimulated the growth of weeds which was insufficiently dealt with due to lack of peasant work motivation and primitive agricultural technology.

Mice infestations

Deep snow and excess crop yield caused by peasants postponing harvest work and leaving out ears on the field to be gleaned later as part of peasant resistance is argued by Tauger to have caused an infestation of mice which destroyed grain stores and ate animal fodder.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* * * * * {{cite book , last= Snyder , first= Timothy , author-link= Timothy D. Snyder , year= 2010 , title= Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin , location= New York , publisher=

Basic Books Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1950 and located in New York, now an imprint of Hachette Book Group. It publishes books in the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics, science, politics, sociology, current affairs, and history. H ...

, isbn= 978-0-465-00239-9 , url= https://books.google.com/books?id=n856VkLmF34C , url-status= dead , archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130222065021/https://books.google.com/books?id=n856VkLmF34C&pg=&dq&hl=en , archive-date= 22 February 2013 1932 in Europe 1933 in Europe

Holodomor The Holodomor ( uk, Голодомо́р, Holodomor, ; derived from uk, морити голодом, lit=to kill by starvation, translit=moryty holodom, label=none), also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine, was a man-made famin ...

Holodomor