The Holodomor pt. 1

The Holodomor, meaning “murder by hunger”, was a specific part of the larger Soviet famine that took place in the Ukrainian SSR from 1932-1933. The number of deaths ranged from 2.6 to 10 million with a death rate at about 25,000 a day, more than half being children. The exact reason or cause of this terrible famine is still debatable, but Joseph Stalin has been held accountable by many. Stalin’s harsh policies such as collectivization and the liquidation of the kulaks were targeted towards the Ukrainians and played a large role in the famine. So, was the Holodomor actually a genocide?
The First Plan (1928-1933) was the beginning of Stalin’s infamous Five Year Plans to help revive the Soviet Union‘s economy. Stalin wished to rapidly industrialize the USSR to keep up with the other nations. He set up unrealistic quotas that farmers and factories were required achieve. Those who were able to achieve the impossible were rewarded-- and those who couldn’t would be ultimately punished. Families began to have difficulties feeding themselves since a great majority of their harvests went to the government to feed industrial workers. In late 1932, production quotas grew by 44% in the Ukrainian SSR and starvation began to spread and famine grew near.
During The First Plan, Stalin was unsatisfied with individual production which then led to collectivization. Collectivization is where all individual land and livestock were to be given up to the state and farmers were to be put into collective farms. About 20% of peasant households were supposed to be collectivized, yet it was set to 30% in Ukraine. The peasants highly disapproved of this policy since it seemed like a revival of serfdom. Many resisted by slaughtering all of their livestock or scorching their lands. Their continuous resistance led Stalin to launch the liquidation of the kulaks in 1929. During the dekulakization, peasants were either shot, imprisoned, exiled to Siberia, or evicted then sent to the gulag.
As collectivization continued in Ukraine, starvation began to advance. Stalin sent troops to the home of many to confiscate any hidden grain or food matter. Villagers would attempt to save their food by burying them into deep pits or trade valuables for a small sack of millet. “Large numbers of adult peasants and orphaned children moved to the cities, attracted by food rations” (Khlevniuk 54). By the Law of Spikelets, even gleaning was criminalized. Many diseases such as smallpox, relapsing fever, typhoid fever, and malaria took a toll along with the famine. Thousands of Ukrainians suffered as dead bodies were scattered all over villages. Some even desperately turned to cannibalism. Stalin also secured Ukraine’s perimeters so that no person would be able to escape in the search of food or for help.