Collectivization and the Famine of 1932-33
The ambitious industrialization program required a lot of money. Stalin decided to get it mostly by exploiting the peasantry. With this aim the program of collectivization was designed. The Soviet government believed that it would be able to buy grain from the peasants at a reduced price and sell it abroad to finance industrialization. But the prices the state offered – often as little as one-eighth of the market price – were considered too low by the peasants and they refused to sell their grain. Infuriated by this “sabotage” Stalin decided to put the peasants under total control through collectivization, and squeeze grain from them practically free of charge.
Wholesale collectivization began in 1929. Realizing that the wealthier peasants (kulaks in Russian or kurkuls in Ukrainian) would resist collectivization most bitterly, Stalin decided to liquidate them as a class. By liquidating the kulaks Stalin also planned to deprive the peasants of their leaders and weaken their resistance. Hundreds of thousands of kulaks were deprived of their property and deported to forced labor camps in Siberia. As the kulaks were crushed, Stalin launched his attack on the peasantry as a whole.
The Famine of 1932-33
The famine that occurred in 1932-33 was a great tragedy in Ukrainian history. It clearly shows an inhumane nature of the Stalinist regime. The famine was completely artificial. The harvest of 1932 was only 12% below the 1926-30 average. In 1932 many trains loaded with grain crossed the Soviet Union’s state borders as usual.
Many historians believe that Stalin made famine to put down mass resistance to collectivization. For example, over 1,500 terrorist acts against Communist officials were registered in the Ukrainian village in the period from January till June 1930. In a number of regions armed revolts occurred. Historians calculated that the number of rebels in Ukrainian villages exceeded 40,000 in 1930. Before joining collective farms the peasants slaughtered 50% of their livestock. The peasants who did not want to join a collective farm faced serious difficulties. They were given poor land and were forced to pay high taxes. Some peasants were just deported to Siberia for refusal to join a collective farm. Those who joined did not show much enthusiasm to work for a symbolic reward. Their efficiency in collecting the harvest which did not belong to them was low. The amount of collected grain was declining year after year despite good weather conditions.5 Such ‘sabotage’ enraged Stalin, who needed grain to finance the ambitious industrialization program. The dictator decided to teach peasants a lesson by famine.
In fact, all grain after 1932 harvest and all remaining food supplies were taken from the peasants. The government needed grain, not foodstuff (vegetables, honey, nuts, dried fruits, etc), for export. Thus, it collected the foodstuff only to punish the villagers. The result was the famine of 1932-33 that killed over three million people.6 Lacking bread, peasants ate pets, rats, frogs, earthworms, bark, and leaves. There were numerous cases of cannibalism. Whole regions died out. Special police forces often blocked the areas with dying peasants preventing them from leaving the place. The famine inflicted an incurable psychological trauma on the peasants: they lost the will to fight for their rights. The peasants’ will and the spirit of individualism were broken. In fact, they were turned into serfs. They did not have the right to leave their villages without permission. They worked almost for free. They lost interest in the land and in the results of their labor. The Holodomor (the name of the famine of 1932-33) imbued the peasants with fear, political apathy, and passiveness. The village could not oppose the regime anymore. By the end of 1935 almost all peasants had been collectivized.
Many Ukrainian historians, especially in western Ukraine and Kyiv, consider the famine of 1932-33 as genocide (killing a group of people because of their nationality) against the Ukrainian people. In their opinion, Stalin used famine to crash the foundation of Ukrainian nationalism – the peasantry. Russian historians and many Ukrainian historians from Eastern Ukraine admit that Holodomor was a horrible crime, but refuse to recognize it as an act of genocide because the 1932-33 famine killed not only millions in Ukraine, but also 1.5 million in Kazakhstan (38% of its population) and over two million in some regions of Belarus and Russia (the Central Volga region, the Northern Caucasus Territory, the Kuban region, the Don region, Western Siberia, the Southern Urals, and the Central Black Soil Region).7 In those territories there were also blockades to prevent people from escaping. Russian historians stress the fact that many Ukrainian (not Russian) communist activists actively participated in food requisitions in villages that caused numerous deaths. Not only Ukrainians died on Ukrainian territory, many thousands of Germans (the descendants of the colonists brought here by Catherine II), Jews, Russians, Tatars, and other nationalities also perished in Ukraine in 1932-33. Russian historians say that if most productive peasants had lived in cold regions of the USSR, they would have suffered not less than Ukrainian peasants. They claim that famine happened mostly in the regions with rich soil where peasants had individualistic mentality and showed serious resistance to collectivization. In their opinion, Stalin used the famine as a tool to force the peasants to cooperate with the regime, and he was indifferent to their nationality.
Russian historians suggest that their Ukrainian colleagues should prove with facts that Ukrainians died because of their nationality and that “the Holodomor was engineered for this very purpose.” They stress the fact that the communist leadership was international (with a Georgian on the top)8 and that neither Russian nor Ukrainian archives have party orders to use famine for killing Ukrainians. Thus, in their view, there is no direct evidence that Ukrainians were killed by starvation because they were Ukrainians. Statistics says that in contrast to the Ukrainian village the mortality rate in Ukrainian cities in 1932-33 was usual.9 It was the place of living (city or village) and not nationality that defined people’s chances for survival. In 2009 Russian historians published archive documents which show that Moscow provided aid to starving people in Ukraine in 1933. Without this aid almost all of the 25 million people who lived in the rural areas of Ukraine would have died. According to Russian historians, these documents refute the concept of the ‘engineered genocide against Ukrainians.’ Ukrainian historians say that Moscow, after confiscating all foodstuffs from the village, decided to feed the peasants to secure the 1933 harvest that was needed for export. In 2008 Russia proposed to create an international commission to investigate the famine of 1933.
Foreign scholars’ views on the problem also differ. The majority of foreign historians believe that Holodomor was aimed not at the Ukrainians as a nation, but rather at the peasants to break their resistance to collectivization. In 2003 the UN General Assembly recognized the fact of horrible artificial famine in Ukraine, but it refused to regard it as genocide. A similar resolution was issued by UNESCO on November 1, 2007. On 28 April 2010, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) also recognized the famine of 1932-33 as crime against humanity, and refused to regard it as genocide.
The question of genocide is highly politicized in Ukraine. President Viktor Yushchenko urged the parliament to recognize the famine as an act of genocide against the Ukrainians. Some analysts say that in such a way he wanted to discredit his political rivals (who are mostly pro-Russian). In 2006 the Ukrainian parliament rather reluctantly recognized the famine as an act of genocide.10 Yushchenko also tried to introduce criminal punishment for those who refuse to regard the famine as an act of genocide, but failed. The concept of genocide is very harmful for Russia politically since it seriously undermines a popular in Russia and Eastern Ukraine idea about common roots of Russians and Ukrainians and deprives the Kremlin of arguments for reunification.
Some Ukrainian political analysts criticize Yushchenko for drawing extra attention to the issue of Holodomor. “Historically, the complex of ‘victim’ has been formed in Ukraine that doesn’t exist in Russia and Belarus,” said V. Fesenko, head of the Center for Political Studies “Penta.” “We form the nation not on our successes, but on defeats,” he stressed. Historian Georgii Kasianov, head of the Department of Modern Ukrainian History and Politics at the Institute of Ukrainian History, believes that the genocidial version of the famine’s interpretation is a “doubtful achievement.” According to the historian, the victim image of the Ukrainian people can draw sympathy from the world community, but not respect.
The question of whether the famine was genocide or not provokes debate not only among historians and politicians, but also among Ukrainian public in general. In November 2009 the survey conducted by the Kyiv Horshenin Institute for Management Issues revealed that 66 percent of Ukrainians believe that the famine was not genocide. Thirty-two percent believe it was, while two percent say the Holodomor didn’t happen at all. The position of President Viktor Yanukovych (elected in 2010) on the famine does not differ from that of the European Union.
The topic of Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 had been a taboo in the Soviet Union for decades. The official Soviet propaganda claimed that it had never existed and was “invented” by “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists” in emigration for political aims. The fact of the famine was officially recognized during Gorbachev’s perestroika in the late 1980s.