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Revision as of 10:34, 22 September 2004 by 212.76.39.12 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Holodomor (the Ukranian Holocaust) was a famine that occurred in Ukraine, the northern Caucasus, and the lower Volga River between 1932 and 1933. Previously this was the most productive agricultural area of the Soviet Union. It was deliberately provoked by the government to break down resistance to forced collectivization, and it also served to crush Ukrainian nationalism. Thus the famine was accompanied by a devastating purge of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the Ukrainian Communist party itself. The famine broke the peasants' will to resist collectivization and left Ukraine politically, socially, and psychologically traumatized.
The policy of all-out collectivization was instituted by Joseph Stalin in 1929 to finance industrialization, and it had a disastrous effect on agricultural productivity. Nevertheless, in 1932 Stalin raised Ukraine's grain procurement quotas by 44%. This meant that there would not be enough grain to feed the peasants, since Soviet law required that no grain from a collective farm could be given to the members of the farm until the government's quota was met. Stalin's decision and the methods used to implement it condemned millions of peasants to death by starvation. Party officials, with the aid of regular troops and secret police units, waged a war of attrition against peasants who refused to give up their grain. Even indispensible seed grain was forcibly confiscated from peasant households. Any man, woman, or child caught taking even a handful of grain from a collective farm could be, and often was, executed or deported. Those who did not appear to be starving were often suspected of hoarding grain. Peasants were prevented from leaving their villages by the NKVD and a system of internal passports.
The death toll from the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine has been estimated between six and ten million. According to a Soviet author, "Before they died, people often lost their senses and ceased to be human beings." Yet one of Stalin's lieutenants in Ukraine stated in 1933 that the famine was a great success. It showed the peasants "who is the master here. It cost millions of lives, but the collective farm system is here to stay."