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Revision as of 19:15, 2 October 2004 by Shorne (talk | contribs) (Do not revert changes wholesale without discussing them. See the talk page.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Holodomor (the Ukrainian Holocaust) was a famine said to have occurred in the Ukraine, the northern Caucasus, and the lower Volga River between 1932 and 1933. These are considered to be among the most productive agricultural areas of the Soviet Union.
Opponents of agricultural collectivization, typically kulaks, attempted to sabotage the movement. Some actively destroyed collective property and attacked those who joined collectives. Many simply held Ukrainian land, some of the most fertile in the USSR, without working it. A major purge of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the Ukrainian Communist Party itself resulted.
The policy of all-out collectivization was instituted by Joseph Stalin in 1929 to finance industrialization, and it had a detrimental effect on agricultural productivity. Nevertheless, in 1932 the Soviet Union raised the 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 be given to the members of the farm until the government's quota was met. Soviet policy and the methods used to implement it led to death by starvation among the peasantry. 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. A 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. The NKVD and a system of internal passports restricted the peasants' ability to travel outside their villages.
The death toll from the 1932–33 famine in the Ukraine is hotly contested. Estimates vary more than an order of magnitude. Some people dispute the famine itself, citing evidence allegedly fabricated in the West.
External links
- Holodomor Website
- The myth concerning the famine in the Ukraine Numerous articles that dispute the famine