THE HOLODOMOR (1932–1933)
A Case for Genocide Classification and Historical Reality
Image borrowed from The Kyiv Independent.
The Holodomor (a term meaning "death by hunger"), the Great Famine engineered by the Soviet regime in Ukraine between 1932 and 1933, stands as a critical and devastating moment in European history. Its legal classification as genocide is warranted by compelling evidence demonstrating both the intent and the methods used by Soviet authorities to destroy the Ukrainian nation, particularly its rural majority. This analysis demonstrates how the actions taken by Moscow directly fulfilled the criteria outlined in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
I. The Legal Basis for Genocide Classification
The 1948 UN Genocide Convention defines the crime to include “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction” when coupled with the intent to destroy a protected national, ethnic, racial, or religious group “in whole or in part” [1]. In Ukraine during 1932–33, Soviet authorities actively imposed punitive measures that created these life-destroying conditions: blacklists, confiscation of all foodstuffs, blockades preventing internal movement, and the explicit refusal of outside aid. These actions were not universally applied across the USSR but were specifically targeted at the Ukrainian countryside, thereby meeting the intent and methods tests articulated in Article II(c) of the Convention. The core of this legal argument rests on the specific purpose of the state-imposed famine: the elimination of the most resilient and nationally conscious segment of the Ukrainian population. The convergence of targeted economic policy with political and cultural repression makes the classification of genocide warranted, focusing specifically on imposing life-destroying conditions on the Ukrainian national group. The authoritative body of scholarship confirms that these targeted actions were the direct cause of the massive excess mortality, distinguishing the Holodomor from mere famine caused by economic mismanagement [2].
II. Uniqueness and Targeted Policy
While the USSR experienced multiple famines—notably in 1921–22, Kazakhstan (1930–33), and the postwar period (1946–47)—the events of late 1932–33 in Ukraine are distinguished by a decisive concentration of punitive measures. The Holodomor was not merely a consequence of collectivization gone wrong; it was an active weaponization of starvation. While poor harvests and resistance to collectivization created food shortages in regions like the Volga, only Ukraine and Ukrainian-majority areas like the Kuban (a region in the North Caucasus historically settled by Ukrainians) faced a unique stack of policies implemented simultaneously and enforced by internal security forces (OGPU). These included grain procurement quotas that were impossible to meet, the use of blacklists to cordon off villages, immediate travel bans, and simultaneous political purges, all measures applied “mostly or only” in these regions. The crucial difference is that once the starvation began, Moscow refused to allocate aid to the hardest-hit Ukrainian regions, while often shipping reserve grain to neighboring, non-Ukrainian districts. This exceptional targeting of life-destroying policies confirms the intent to subdue a specific national group by eliminating its most determined segment [3].
III. Life Under the Blacklist: Survivor Testimony and the Geography of Starvation
The systematic engineering of starvation manifested on the ground in a landscape of utter destitution and terror. In the hardest-hit regions—including the Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Poltava Oblasts—villages subjected to the punitive 'blacklists' (чорні дошки, literally "black boards") quickly collapsed into agonized, prolonged death. Survivor testimonies provide harrowing details of this calculated destruction. As many recall, “confiscation brigades - they took everything, every seed, every potato. They didn't just take the grain; they broke the oven floor looking for hidden food. They knew what they were doing”. The confiscation brigades, often composed of non-Ukrainian Komsomol members or poor peasants from neighboring villages, were used by the authorities to enforce the brutality and break communal solidarity. They were methodical, confiscating not just stored grain but all food capable of sustaining life, including salted meat, pickled vegetables, and dried fruit [4, 5].
Villages grew eerily silent, devoid of livestock (which were consumed early on) and the sounds of children, many of whom were simply too weak to cry. The roads and train tracks were littered with the bodies of those who attempted to flee. The desperation led to consumption of grass, tree bark, and roots (khryashch), a desperate phase before the body ultimately failed, marked by visible physical symptoms like swollen limbs and faces (dropsy). Tragically, instances of cannibalism became a desperate reality, a horror the OGPU (Unified State Political Directorate) was well aware of and documented in its reports, classifying such acts as "famine-related crimes" rather than crimes of murder, thereby prioritizing the cover-up of the famine's existence over the protection of human life. The policy also created a jarring distinction between the targeted peasantry and industrial workers: cities, despite massive shortages, still received meager but survivable rations (kartochki or ration cards) to ensure the functioning of factories, confirming the regime's purposeful discrimination between the essential industrial class and the disposable, resisting Ukrainian rural population. The concentration of deaths clearly followed the geography of these punitive policies, while areas near forests or large industrial centers sometimes offered a slightly greater chance of survival.
IV. Imperial Goals and the Weaponization of Famine
The Holodomor was rooted in the imperial center’s determination to suppress the distinct Ukrainian nation. Following a brief period of promoting "indigenization" (nativization of Soviet power) in the 1920s, Moscow sharply reversed course, perceiving the emergence of a self-aware Ukrainian identity and widespread peasant resistance as an existential threat to its control over valuable territory and agricultural resources. This policy reversal was driven by two deeply intertwined goals.
First, the goal was to crush Ukrainian identity and resistance. The famine weaponized starvation alongside a comprehensive cultural-political assault on Ukrainian life, infamously known as the “Executed Renaissance” (Rozstriliane Vidrodzhennia) (a term for the generation of purged Ukrainian writers and artists). This terror targeted not only intellectuals but the very infrastructure of national consciousness: the independent cultural leadership, the thriving cooperative movement, and the systematic liquidation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) (the independent national church). These actions eliminated alternative centers of authority and communication. Furthermore, in late 1932, the Kremlin rolled back Ukrainization efforts, including those in the Kuban region, and swiftly followed up by punishing villages with blacklists and banning peasant flight from Ukraine in January 1933, effectively sealing millions in the famine zone [6].
Second, the regime sought to force collectivization and extract resources for rapid industrialization. The coercive and brutal process of dekulakization (the Soviet campaign to dispossess 'wealthy' or resisting peasants) provided the necessary grain and assets to finance the ambitious First Five-Year Plan, even when the imposed quotas vastly exceeded real harvests. The extracted wealth funded key showcase projects, including the DniproHES (Dnipro Hydroelectric Station) hydroelectric dam and heavy-industry centers like Magnitogorsk. Crucially, large shipments of expropriated Ukrainian grain were also exported abroad to secure hard currency, highlighting the moral bankruptcy of the policy: millions starved while the state sold their sustenance internationally. This process of resource extraction was reinforced by state coercion, notably the implementation of the internal passport system (December 27, 1932), which was deliberately withheld from most kolkhoz peasants (members of collective farms), ensuring they were trapped and immobilized in the famine zones. Additionally, the draconian “Law of Five Ears of Grain” (August 7, 1932) imposed severe penalties for the crime of gleaning, further criminalizing survival and making starvation an inevitable outcome of the policy [7].
V. Manifestations of Intent on the Ground
The policies implemented from the late 1920s through the early 1930s provide tangible evidence of the central Soviet intent to break Ukrainian resistance and national identity.
The attempt to crush Ukrainian identity and peasant resistance manifested in direct, brutal controls. The SVU (Union for the Liberation of Ukraine) trial in Kharkiv in March–April 1930 was a staged event designed to cripple non-Communist intellectual life. This was followed by the rollback of Ukrainization in late 1932, which, combined with the extreme grain-procurement coercion, targeted the infrastructure of Ukrainian national self-determination. The December 6, 1932, Ukrainian SSR decree “On blacklisting villages…” systematically starved entire communities by cutting off all trade and supplies and authorizing house-to-house food searches [8]. This coercive environment directly led to massive, organized resistance. OGPU (Unified State Political Directorate) reports from 1930 documented thousands of organized women-led protests, known as bab′i bunty (women’s revolts) (organized protests by peasant women against collectivization), across districts like Bila Tserkva, Korosten, and Shepetivka. Scholarship estimates over 3,700 women’s demonstrations in 1930 alone across the USSR, with Ukrainian rural protest being a major locus, highlighting the level of organized defiance the regime sought to eliminate through starvation.
The simultaneous policy of Dekulakization and Collectivization provided the mechanism for resource extraction. Stalin’s call to “Liquidate the kulaks (a Soviet term for prosperous or resisting peasants) as a class” (December 27, 1929), formalized in January 1930, systematically categorized targeted households for execution, deportation, or internal exile, eradicating the most productive and resistant farmers [9]. Although Stalin briefly called a tactical pause with his “Dizzy with Success” article (March 2, 1930), collectivization quickly resumed with escalating reprisals. This system of control culminated in the August 7, 1932 law on safeguarding socialist property—popularly known as the “Law of Five Ears”. This draconian decree established capital punishment for the theft of collective property, defining "theft" so broadly that it included a starving peasant picking up a handful of fallen grain (the titular "five ears") from a field already harvested by the collective farm. This law, which Stalin himself called the "basis of revolutionary legality," effectively criminalized survival, ensuring that starvation became the official legal consequence for all those under the blacklists. Witnesses described the terrifying enforcement: "We were starving, and my mother went out to the edge of the field after the reapers had passed. She found only a small pocketful of kernels. A guard caught her and took her away. They called it theft of 'socialist property.' She was sentenced to ten years." The swift and disproportionate sentencing demonstrated the extreme governmental cruelty deployed against mere acts of subsistence, directly serving the goal of eliminating the rural population [10].
VI. Demographic and Historical Consequences
The Holodomor resulted in horrific demographic loss, with scholarly ranges for excess deaths in Ukraine commonly placed at ~3.5–5 million people. Crucially, spatial research, exemplified by the Harvard MAPA Great Famine Project, provides irrefutable geographical proof, mapping the specific blacklisted localities and regional mortality patterns that correlate directly with the enforcement of these punitive, targeted policies. Beyond immediate deaths, the long-term damage included a devastating demographic deficit (the combination of direct deaths and suppressed birthrates) that crippled the Ukrainian population for generations. This population gap was often filled by state-sponsored population transfers and the organized resettlement of Russian and Belarusian farmers into depopulated Ukrainian villages, an act of cultural engineering designed to alter the ethnic makeup and silence the region's national aspirations. This demographic shift fundamentally altered the cultural landscape, underpinning a decades-long regime of Soviet denial that stifled collective memory. This enduring trauma was finally addressed in an independent Ukraine, which passed a 2006 law formally recognizing the Holodomor as an act of genocide [11].
VII. The Contemporary Research Landscape
While scholarly consensus on the political intent behind the Holodomor has solidified, the contemporary research environment faces contrasting realities. Ukraine has commendably expanded access via museum portals, document readers, and digital atlases (HREC/HURI MAPA), making vast amounts of primary material available. This openness allows researchers to trace the policy implementation at the local level. Conversely, Russia has drastically curtailed access to Stalin-era archives and moved to liquidate Memorial, the leading non-governmental organization dedicated to documenting Soviet crimes. These restrictions significantly complicate critical historical work on centrally held Soviet records, particularly the Politburo correspondence and high-level decision-making documents needed to conclusively prove the direct chain of command and command responsibility for the genocide. These limitations, which have been criticized internationally and challenged before the European Court of Human Rights, impede the full documentation of the Kremlin’s political intent in the 1930s [12].
Conclusion
The Holodomor was not a natural disaster but a politically motivated act of targeted destruction. The deliberate imposition of fatal life conditions—specifically the blacklists, food confiscations, and movement bans concentrated in Ukrainian regions—paired with the political intent to suppress Ukrainian national identity and resistance, firmly establishes the tragedy as an act of genocide under the 1948 UN Convention. This historical understanding, based on decades of archival work and survivor testimony, is essential for recognizing the magnitude of the crime and its enduring impact on the Ukrainian nation.
Furthermore, the history of the Holodomor holds profound significance for understanding the contemporary conflict, as the tactics of destroying Ukrainian cultural identity, attempting to erase national consciousness, and the weaponization of essential resources (like energy and food) echo the imperial strategies used by the Soviet regime in 1932-33. This historical parallel underscores the necessity of recognizing and documenting the enduring roots of this conflict.
References
[1] United Nations. (1948). Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
[2] National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide. (n.d.). The History of the Holodomor. https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/the-history-of-the-holodomor/
[3] Kuromiya, H. (2008). The Great Ukrainian Famine 1932-33. Sciences Po. https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/great-ukrainian-famine-1932-33.html
[4] Holodomor Survivors' Stories. (n.d.). Holodomor.ca. https://holodomor.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/5.-Holodomor-survivors-MY.pdf
[5] Holodomor Survivor Testimonies. (n.d.). Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (AUGB). https://www.augb.co.uk/holodomor/holodomor-survivor-testomonies
[6] Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (SVU). (n.d.). Encyclopedia of Ukraine. https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CU%5CN%5CUnionfortheLiberationofUkraineSVU.htm
[7] Dnipro Hydroelectric Station. (n.d.). Encyclopedia of Ukraine. https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CD%5CN%5CDniproHydroelectricStation.htm
[8] Grain Procurement in Ukraine (1932). (n.d.). The Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/trans-k2grain.html
[9] Stalin on the Liquidation of the Kulak. (1929, December 27). Seventeen Moments in Soviet History. https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/collectivization/collectivization-texts/stalin-on-the-liquidation-of-the-kulak/
[10] Resolution on Safeguarding Property of State Enterprises, Collective Farms and Cooperatives and Strengthening Public (Socialist) Property. (1932, August 7). HREC Education. https://education.holodomor.ca/teaching-materials/primary-documents/resolution-on-safeguarding-property-of-state-enterprises-collective-farms-and-cooperatives-and-strengthening-public-socialist-property-excerpt-excerpt/
[11] The famine of 1932–33 (Holodomor). (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-famine-of-1932-33-Holodomor
[12] Documents and Sources. (n.d.). Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC). https://holodomor.ca/resources/documents-and-sources/documents/
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