Holodomor

This is a #Bonusnote that covers the Holodomor in particular and acts as an addition to the #Detailnote "15_Interwar Years". It is not very polished.

Road to Genocide

Context

• Knowledge of the Holodomor remained suppressed until the late 1980s, when Gorbachev’s Glasnost reforms allowed open discussion. The Soviet regime had covered up the famine with extreme measures, including executing people who knew of mass grave locations.
• Scholarly consensus today holds that the famine was a deliberate act by Stalin, aimed at crushing Ukrainian nationalism during the upheaval of the First Five-Year Plan.
• Stalin did not issue explicit written orders to “starve” Ukrainians but used euphemistic directives whose practical implementation led to mass death. Around 3.9 million Ukrainians died, though the exact toll remains uncertain.
• Mortality rates in Ukraine were about ten times higher than in Russia. Several heavily affected Russian regions, such as Rostov and Belgorod, had predominantly Ukrainian populations and had once been part of the Ukrainian People’s Republic.
• Stalin withheld aid from Ukraine while providing it to other Soviet regions and, on January 1, 1933, ordered strict enforcement of the 1932 decree criminalizing the concealment of food for personal use—punishable by death.

Collectivization and Resistance

• Before collectivization, Ukrainian farming was largely subsistence-based. Stalin’s policy sought to merge small farms into state-run collectives, with the state as sole owner and purchaser of produce.
• Rural resistance was strong, as communism had minimal influence outside urban areas and peasants were reluctant to give up their meager holdings.
• Forms of protest included burning fields, slaughtering livestock, and refusing to produce more than subsistence levels of grain.
• The regime labeled resistant peasants as “Kulaks,” a term applied broadly—sometimes to those with slightly more livestock or equipment than neighbors, or to anyone withholding grain for personal consumption.
• Official “signs” of Kulaks included possessing extra money, owning machinery, or hiring labor. This classification justified their dispossession, arrest, and deportation.
• State rhetoric portrayed Kulaks as bandits and enemies of the people, legitimizing harsh measures such as confiscation of homes, food, and clothing, as well as forced relocation.

Mass Deportations

• Approximately 2 million people classified as Kulaks were deported, often to remote rural areas of Russia, including Siberia.
• Deportations frequently involved abandonment in the open without shelter or supplies, leading to large-scale deaths.
• This campaign amounted to the targeted destruction of a distinct social group within the Ukrainian population.

Droughts

• Ukraine’s steppe regions have historically been vulnerable to droughts; one such drought struck in 1931.
• Despite sharply reduced harvests, the Soviet government kept grain quotas at levels already difficult to achieve under normal conditions, requiring full delivery regardless of local shortages.

Grain Quotas and Consequences

• Grain exports were central to financing the Five-Year Plan, providing hard currency for industrial development. To maximize exports, Stalin demanded higher production, resulting in a thirtyfold increase in exports within two years.
• In 1931, Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov recommended relief for Ukraine, predicting famine conditions by 1932. The central government approved limited aid, but it was directed almost entirely to major cities such as Kyiv and Odesa, bypassing rural areas.
• By summer 1932, only 20 of Ukraine’s 600 districts were allocated any assistance.
• Quotas remained in place, and Ukrainian officials were held personally responsible for meeting them.
• Stalin increasingly distrusted local Ukrainian party members for resisting unrealistic demands, leading to their removal and the dismantling of national communism within the Soviet system.

Recap

• Late 1920s: collectivization imposed on Ukraine.
• Wealthier landowners resisted through destruction of crops and livestock.
• The state responded with deportations and executions, removing a large portion of Ukraine’s most skilled agricultural workers.
• Export quotas were raised to unsustainable levels to fund industrialization.
• The 1931 drought deepened the food crisis.
• Relief was restricted to a small fraction of Ukrainian districts.
• Officials faced severe consequences for failing to meet grain export targets.

Genocide

Harmful Policies

• In late 1932, the Soviet government introduced new measures to enforce grain requisition. One of the most damaging was the “Blackboard” system, which publicly listed villages failing to meet quotas.
• Villages placed on Blackboards were subjected to an economic blockade: they were barred from trading goods, purchasing equipment, or accessing essential supplies until quotas were met. The restrictions later included flour and seed, and violations were punishable by imprisonment or death.
• These policies were implemented despite the regime’s awareness that farms were underperforming due to drought, the loss of skilled labor from Kulak deportations, and severe food shortages.
• For many communities, being placed on the Blackboards meant certain starvation.

Human Impact

• The winter of 1932–1933 marked the height of the Holodomor, when survival became nearly impossible for large parts of the rural population.
• Starving families resorted to eating pets, insects, grass, boiled leather, and in extreme cases, human flesh. Even these measures could not prevent death, which accelerated as winter progressed.
• Witnesses recalled the physical transformation of the starving: skin turning yellow, then black, bodies too weak to lift their heads, and children collapsing during lessons or while playing.
• Many died in homes, streets, and fields, their bodies left uncollected as the living lacked the strength to bury them.
• Some survivors described the inability to digest food after prolonged starvation, with fatal results when nourishment was finally found.
• Hunger dismantled family and social bonds, leading to acts of desperation, including infanticide and parricide, as people’s mental and physical states broke under extreme deprivation.

Psychological Warfare

• The Soviet government maintained unrealistic grain quotas and destroyed milling equipment in villages that failed to meet them.
• Quotas could be so extreme that fulfilling them would have taken years; failure led to being labeled as Kulaks and stripped of rights.
• In March 1933, Ukraine’s borders were sealed, preventing movement to other Soviet regions. Aid was directed elsewhere, leaving Ukrainian communities to starve.
• Protest was criminalized as anti-Soviet activity. Ukrainian newspapers, schools, and cultural institutions were shut down both within Ukraine and in Ukrainian-populated areas such as the northern Caucasus.
• The famine was used as a tool to weaken Ukrainian identity and loyalty to the state.
• Informants who denounced neighbors were rewarded with food, creating an atmosphere of mistrust and fabricated accusations for survival.
• Desperation drove people to abandon families, commit suicide, or attempt escape from rural areas, only to be forced back to die in their villages.
• Food scarcity extended to cities, where violence against the starving was justified as defending the state. Victims were accused of laziness or disloyalty, and their suffering was framed as their own fault for failing to meet quotas.

Death Toll and Policy Changes

• Approximately 4.5 million people died in the famine, including 3.9 million in Ukraine. Many deaths also occurred in Russian regions with significant Ukrainian populations.
• Comparable policies in Kazakhstan caused the deaths of about one-third of the native nomadic population, often through direct military repression.
• The Soviet regime concealed the famine’s scale by silencing witnesses, falsifying reports, and promoting denial.
• Life expectancy figures reflect the catastrophe: rural Ukrainians born in 1932 could expect to live around 42 years, while those born in 1933 averaged only five years.
• In May 1933, policy shifted. The Kremlin began distributing food aid and replaced fixed grain quotas with a harvest-based taxation system.
• Arrests decreased as the regime sought more labor for collective farms.
• By late 1933, quotas were reduced, and famine conditions began to ease.

The Cover Up

Aftermath

• In 1934, Stalin declared the “enemy” defeated, claiming the Kulaks had been eliminated, while warning that nationalists and other alleged opponents still remained to be suppressed.
• The famine was, in effect, a campaign by Stalin and the Soviet leadership against Ukraine, with civilians paying the price.
• By 1933, both urban centers and party leadership knew the rural population faced mass death. Reports to the Kremlin acknowledged the famine but framed it as peasants failing to “understand” Soviet policy.
• Unlike the 1921 famine, the Soviet state refused foreign aid and officially denied the existence of famine, describing deaths as “sickness from malnutrition.”

Covering the Tracks

• Discussing the famine was criminalized; survivors could face prison for raising the topic.
• Soldiers returning from service found families dead or missing, and survivors unwilling to speak for fear of reprisals.
• Local officials were ordered to destroy population records and registries to erase evidence of the death toll.
• Bodies were buried in mass graves or dumped in inaccessible sites, and the results of the 1937 census—showing severe demographic collapse—were suppressed.
• The Soviet line maintained there had been no famine, branding those who spoke of it as liars and enemies of the state.
• This denial remained official policy until Gorbachev acknowledged the famine in the late 1980s.
• In 2006, Ukraine and several other states formally recognized the Holodomor as genocide. Russia rejected this characterization and engaged in disinformation campaigns to discredit it.