Yesterday was the annual memorial of the Holodomor, the systematic genocide of Ukrainian peasants by the Soviet Union. Literally translated, Holodomor means death by starvation or murder by starvation. And that’s exactly what Stalin’s collectivist policies did.
While estimates vary, it is widely accepted that between 4,000,000 and 7,000,000 Ukrainians died from starvation between 1932 and 1933. Many more became cannibals, at least 2,500 were convicted of that charge during the Holodomor.
In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, Stalin’s collectivist policies forced small-holding peasants to give up their land to large collective farms. Many of the Ukrainian peasants who resisted were labeled kulaks and branded enemies of the state. Thousands were forcibly evicted and sent to Siberian gulags.
In 1932, the Soviets imposed impossible grain quotas on the Ukrainian farms. With the farms unable to meet those quotas, officials started confiscating even the seed set aside for planting and levying fines in meat and potatoes for failure to fulfill the quotas. Special teams were sent to search homes and even seized other foodstuffs.
Starving farmers attempted to leave their villages in search of food, but Soviet authorities issued a decree forbidding Ukraine’s peasants from leaving the country. As a result, many thousands of farmers who had managed to leave their villages were apprehended and sent back, virtually a death sentence. A law was introduced that made the theft of even a few stalks of grain an act of sabotage punishable by execution. Although informed of the dire conditions in Ukraine, central authorities ordered local officials to extract even more from the villages.
There is some debate as to whether the Holodomor was an intentional act, that Stalin and the Soviets intended to starve millions of Ukrainians to death or if it was an unintentional act. As a history type person, three things make me believe the Holodomor was 100% intentional.
First, until 1929 or so, Ukraine while a part of the USSR had some degree of autonomy. When the peasantry resisted Soviet collectivization, Stalin reacted badly and deported thousands of more successful farmers and peasants.
Second, while there were some other food shortages elsewhere in Russia in 1932-3, they didn’t cause any mass deaths.
Third, and most damning to me, Much of the grain grown in Ukraine during that period was exported. Simply put, the only time you export foodstuffs during a famine is when you want to punish the populace.
To paraphrase Romans 6:23 The wages of communism is death.