Collectivization and the famine of 1932-33

The ambitious industrialization program required a lot of money. Stalin decided to get them mostly by exploiting the peasantry. With this aim the program of collectivization was designed. Soviet plans for industrial expansion were based on the assumption that the state would be able to buy grain cheaply from the peasants. Stalin planned to sell grain 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 that occurred in 1932-33 was for the Ukrainians what the Holocaust was to the Jews. It cast a dark shadow on the methods and achievements of the Soviet system. The central fact about the famine is that it did not have to happen. It 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. To break the peasants’ will he raised Ukraine’s grain delivery quotas by 44% and sent armed activists to villages to confiscate foodstuff. In fact, all grain after 1932 harvest and all remaining food supplies were taken from the peasants. Even those already swollen from malnutrition were not allowed to keep their foodstuff. If a person did not appear to be starving, he was suspected of hiding food. The government needed grain not foodstuff (vegetables, honey, nuts, dried fruits, etc). Thus, it collected the foodstuff only to punish the villagers. The result was a famine in 1932-33 and a loss of lives estimated as high as over three million.[4] Lacking bread, peasants ate pets, rats, frogs, earthworms, bark, and leaves. There were numerous cases of cannibalism. Whole regions died out. Special police forces were placed on the Ukrainian-Russian border and shot the peasants who tried to cross the border. The traditional Ukrainian village was essentially destroyed. 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.[5] 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 were collectivized.

Ukrainian historians in general consider the famine of 1932-33 as genocide (killing a group of people because of their nationality) against the Ukrainian people. Russian historians 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 Russia (the Central Volga region, the Northern Caucasus Territory, the Kuban region, the Don region, Western Siberia, Southern Urals, and Central Russia). 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 regions with rich soil where peasants had individualistic mentality and showed much 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.

Another reason for Russia’s reluctance to recognize the famine as genocide is fear that in this case it might entail the question of responsibility and, therefore, compensation. Some Ukrainian politicians say that since Russia proclaimed itself the legal successor of the Soviet Union it is responsible for the Holodomor and must compensate Ukraine for the losses. The Russian ambassador Viktor Chernomyrdin advised Ukraine to turn to Georgia for compensations, since Stalin was Georgian.

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 and that neither Russian nor Ukrainian archives have party orders to use famine for killing Ukrainians. Statistics says that in contrast to the Ukrainian village the mortality rate in Ukrainian cities in 1932-33 was usual. It was the place of living (city or village) and not nationality that defined people’s chances for survival. Russia proposed to create an international commission to investigate the famine of 1933.

Foreign scholars’ views on the problem also differ. German historian Stefan Merl and his British colleague Robert Service, for example, stated that the very fact of famine in Ukraine in 1932-33 does not prove that an act of genocide took place. On the other hand, such historians as Robert Conquest (Great Britain), James Mace (USA), and Andrea Graziosi (Italy) declared that genocide really occurred. Their opponents stress the strong connections between these three historians and the Ukrainian Diaspora that financed their investigations. 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 famine in Ukraine, but it refused to regard it as genocide. A similar resolution was issued by UNESCO on November 1, 2007.

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 but not against ethnic Ukrainians, as Yushchenko wanted, but against all nationalities living in Ukraine (Russians, Jews, Poles, Tatars, etc). Thus, the concept of genocide in its Ukrainian variant became very vague. Nowadays Yushchenko wants to introduce criminal punishment for those who refuse to regard the famine as an act of genocide. 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. Russia’s Foreign Ministry stated in November 2007 that Ukraine’s recognition of the Holodomor as genocide is ‘a distortion of history and a sign of disrespect to other nations that suffered from the famine.’

The topic of Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 had been taboo in the Soviet Union for decades. The official Soviet propaganda claimed that it 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.

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