Famine
"...Largely as a result of the forcible collectivization of agriculture, a famine developed in Ukraine. Starvation and all its accompanying diseases stalked unchecked through the richest agricultural region in the Soviet Union, and within the space of a few months hundreds of thousands if not millions of people died in unimaginable misery."
-George Vernadsky, author of A History of Russia
Resistance to Stalin's policies of collectivization and actions by Stalin himself resulted in a large famine primarily in Ukraine.
"[Kulaks] had been the country's most productive [farmers], and starvation...claimed millions...who depended on the food that they had grown."
-Adam Hochschild, author of The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin
"The most terrifying sights were the little children with skeleton limbs dangling from balloon-like abdomens. Starvation had wiped every trace of youth from their faces, turning them into tortured gargoyles; only in their eyes still lingered the reminder of childhood. Everywhere we found men and women lying prone, their faces and bellies bloated, their eyes utterly expressionless." -Victor Kravchenko, author of I Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official "Swollen, gray-skinned farmers rummaged fields for rotten potatoes, or pillaged centuries-old graves for jewelry to trade for food. Whole villages died out. The Soviet authorities treated the victims with a heartlessness that is difficult to fathom. In one instance, a group of starving peasants were found guilty of eating a buried horse and shot. Tons of grain and potatoes rotted in the open while guards prevented hungry people from taking [them]. There were several reports of cannibalism." -Kevin Cunningham, author of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union "I saw the ravages of the famine of 1932-1933 in the Ukraine: hordes of families in rags begging at the railway stations, the women lifting up to the compartment window their starving brats, which, with drumstick limbs, big cadaverous heads and puffed bellies, looked like embryos out of alcohol bottles..." "At each town along the way, we saw hundreds and thousands of starving peasants at the station—with their last ounce of strength they had come from their villages in search of a piece of stale bread. They sat against the station walls in long dreary rows, sleeping, dying, and every morning the station guard would have the corpses removed on wagons covered with canvas." -Soviet actor, during a tour in the Urals, 1933 |
"Everywhere we looked dead and frozen bodies lay by the sides of the road. To our right were bodies of...villagers who apparently had tried to reach the town in search of work and food. Weakened by starvation, they were unable to make it and ended up lying or falling down by the roadside." -Miron Dolot, Ukrainian writer "...the people starved while the Soviet Union exported butter and grain. While Moscow banqueted, Ukraine hungered." -Andrew Gregorovich, author "We have neither bread nor anything else to eat. Dad is completely exhausted from hunger and is lying on the bench, unable to get on his feet. Mother is blind from the hunger and cannot see in the least. So I have to guide her when she has to go outside. Please Uncle, do take me to Kharkiv, because I, too, will die from hunger. Please do take me, please. I'm still young and I want so much to live a while. Here I will surely die, for everyone else is dying..." -Zina Riabokin, in a letter to her uncle |
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"I'm of peasant origin myself and the sufferings of my people hurt me deeply. Tears, blood, death, exile. And why? The land is fertile, the people are hard-working. Why must we let them starve and die and perish?"
-Comrade Somanov, chief of the political department
Personal Interview with Hiroaki KuromiyaWhat factors caused the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33? How did this famine impact Ukraine and the Soviet Union as a whole?
"The government was bent on taking grain from the peasants— as much grain as possible— and did not care about the lives of the peasants. Certainly another important factor was that Moscow refused to admit that there was famine, which prevented them from asking for international assistance. They also continued to export grain when the country needed it, and the imports did not go to the famished areas- they went elsewhere. Many people believed that Stalin’s anti-Ukrainian political color contributed to great famine in Ukraine. The famine led the deaths of millions of people in peacetime, which could have been prevented if Stalin had been honest- if he had made the feeding of the populace his first priority, probably, he would have saved the lives of the several million people who died. It was very important that Stalin showed his brutal policy and demonstrated that Moscow really did not care about the loss of millions of people. That certainly impacted the Soviet Union and the outside world’s depiction of the Soviet Union."
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