Anna Bolubash, B.A., M.A., M.L.S.

The Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933
AS AN INSTRUMENT OF SOVIET NATIONALITIES POLICY

"Food is a weapon":
Maxim Litvinov, 1921 (RSFSR Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs)

"The famine is the direct consequence of a particular social order; so long as this social order exists, such famines are inevitable; they can be abolished only by the abolition of this order of society":
Vladimir Lenin

PART I

Existence and Timing of the Famine

The Soviet Union has made much of its progress in economic development. It has, however, said very little of the human costs that were involved. Perhaps the most severe of these was the great famine that raged from 1932 to 1934.

Although this famine - among the worst recorded in history - claimed the lives of millions of innocent victims,it is scarcely acknowledged today in the West, either by students of the USSR, politicians or the public in general. As a result, there is not one single work which would encompass all the direct or indirect evidence of the famine scattered in hundreds (if not thousands) of news items-in newspapers, articles, books, and eyewitness accounts - that can be found on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Moscow, for its part, has never officially admitted that this particular famine existed. The reason for this concealment is that the famine of 1932-34, unlike its predecessors, was a man-made disaster. It was a direct result of the economic and socio-political policies followed by Moscow during its first five-year plan. Obviously, this is not a point that the Soviet leaders wish to admit, and, in fact, they made such a good job of suppressing knowledge of the famine that few outside the USSR know it existed, and some students of the Soviet Union even suggest that the famine was of little consequence.

There seem to be two schools of thought on the famine. On the one hand, there are those who have admitted to some hunger in the Soviet Union during this period, but no famine. On the other hand, there is a vast majority who have presented evidence of a famine of very large magnitude. Moscow itself has apparently never acknowledged or even mentioned the famine , and it has not been directly referred to in Soviet literature until recently.

To the first school - those who failed "to see" the famine or act as apologists for it - belong persons from the political left and fellow travellers, communists or socialists like Beatrice and Sydney Webb and the ever present "tourists". The former were - for obvious reasons -"blind" to this particular "fault" in the Soviet system, and the latter were given, as always, Potemkin-like tours of the USSR which avoided unnecessary exposure to famine-stricken areas; this was the case with M. Herriot (the former Prime Minister of France), who came on a good-will tour, and the French correspondent in Moscow, M. Lusiani, who obtained permission to meet him in Odessa. The correspondent was strictly forbidden to stray off the route which had been marked out for Herriot. To this group also belong those who knew of the famine but avoided referring to it explicitly because of government pressures. J. Walter Duranty of the New York Times is one example. He, like others, referred to suffering from "food shortages"and "hunger", and wrote understatements and euphemisms such as: "There is no actual starvation, nor are there deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition".

However, it was not possible for Moscow to completely hide the famine, and today we have an extensive body of knowledge on the issue. As W. H. Chamberlin, long-time Moscow correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, stated on his return to the United States: "To anyone who lived in Russia in 1933 and who kept his eyes and ears open, the historicity of the famine is simply not open to question". This observation was echoed by another veteran Moscow correspondent, Eugene Lyons: "There was no more need for investigation to establish the existence of the Russian famine than investigation to establish the existence of American depression . The famine was accepted as a matter of course". Victor Krawchenko, a former Party functionary, concurs that "the famine was a matter of common knowledge".

The observations of those who saw the famine may be divided into three phases. They are: 1) the spring and summer of 1932; 2) the autumn of 1932 through the summer of 1933; and 3) the autumn of 1933 through the summer of 1934. Because the famine was most severe during the spring and early summer months, we shall refer to the periods simply as 1932, 1933, and 1934. The famine began to build up in 1932, reached its peak in 1933, and began to decline in 1934.

According to Isaak Mazepa, former premier of Ukraine, the spring months of 1932 "marked the beginning of famine in the Ukrainian villages". Another former citizen of the Ukrainian SSR also suggests that "in the spring of 1932 people began to die" - a point confirmed by Fainsod and Hryhorij Kostiuk, for instance. W. Alien indicates that the first news of the intensification of the famine came from western Ukrainian provinces (Galicia), and also from the Polish press in 1933. The build-up of the famine during the last months of 1932 is also noted by Belov. Trotsky's "Bulletin of Opposition" (Paris/Berlin, no. 29-30, Sept. 1932) carried an eye witness account of the thousands of youngsters left behind by their starving parents: "The peasants are leaving their children in the cities; the young people leave their villages and travel as stowaways to the North and East. Many bezprizornye (waifs) have appeared in Moscow. The majority of them are Ukrainian".

The famine, however, did not reach its full magnitude until the winter, spring and early summer of 1933. The severity of the situation was suggested by Barnes. Several English writers managed to get to the famine area during the spring; one of the first to report publicly was Malcolm Muggeridge, then a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, who travelled through the North Caucasus and Ukraine. His articles left little doubt about the existence of famine:"To say that there is famine in some of the most fertile parts of Russia is to say much less than the truth: there is not only famine but - in the case of the North Caucasus at least - a state of war, a military occupation". About Ukraine, Muggeridge wrote: "The population is starving". His revelations were followed later by reports by Gareth Jones, former secretary to Lloyd George, who had made personal tours through a number of villages. Jones stated that "there was famine in the Soviet Union, menacing the lives of millions of people". He based his reports on personal observation, and concluded with sardonic congratulations to the "Soviet Foreign Office on its skill in concealing the true situation in the USSR".

The London Times, on its part, also reported semi-starvation conditions, and printed an accusation by the former Russian Charge d'Affairs in Great Britain that famine was growing and would become more terrible. As the flow of information and evidence increased, and the world's public opinion was being stirred, Cardinal Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna, launched an appeal for help for famine victims, who were likely to be numbered in the millions. To the charge that even cannibalism existed, Moscow replied cynically that it had "neither cannibalism nor cardinals", and the next day news came that Moscow had doubled the price of bread. However, none of this was confirmed by the Russian government. Not only did the Russian officials deny the famine, but in the autumn they pressed for a larger world wheat export quota All authors and writers who reported on the disaster seem to concur that in 1933 the famine was at its worst.

While the harvest of 1933 may have alleviated the situation somewhat, the famine did not immediately disappear from the stricken regions; it continued from the late autumn of 1933 through the summer of 1934. Harry Long, a Russian-born correspondent from the Jewish Daily Forward (New York), travelled extensively in the USSR during this period and reported in his newspaper that the famine was still raging. Dr. Ewald Ammende, Secretary of the 'Inter-Confessional and International Aid Committee for the Starvation Districts in the USSR', declared upon his arrival in New York that the Committee was convinced that as many as ten million could starve in the fall and winter of 1934-35 unless the situation changed and aid was provided. A similar appeal was printed in the London Times by officials of a relief fund who warned that "millions of people will die of starvation in the coming winter if help is not forthcoming .. . particularly in Ukraine and the North Caucasus". The same summer, resolutions relative to the famine were introduced into the House of Representatives and the House of Lords by Hamilton Fish Junior and Charnwood respectively; a similarly grim outlook was expressed by many others. Whether the famine carried over into 1935 is not known yet, but on December 5, 1935, an important article appeared in Pravda. It concerned the Don and Kuban regions, and it contained the following statement: "The wickedness of the class enemy reached such a point that many kulaks concealed thousands of poods* of grain and let themselves and their children die of starvation". This statement, absurd as it may be, seems to indicate that even in 1935 the situation was far from normal.

Areas and Groups Afflicted by the Famine

It is conceded by all (those who provided the evidence and those who collected and reported it) that the famine was most severe in Ukraine and the North Caucasus (particularly in the Kuban region). Every item in our bibliography stresses this without fail. Other regions heavily affected were the lower Volga (with a large German population), Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In general, the famine was most severe in grain-growing regions. It was there that collectivization was most complete. With respect to this, Lyons stated that: "The tragedy was in direct proportion to the 'successes' [of collectivization]". In Kazakhstan, nomadic tribes such as the Kirgiz and the Kazakh raised cattle. In the course of collectivization their livestock was destroyed on a massive scale and the population suffered heavy losses. Due to Kazakhstan's isolation, however, relatively little is known about the progress of the famine there. Scattered famine reports were also noted for Central Asia and Byelorussia. Chamberlin observed the following concerning the famine and the regions affected: "The unquestionable fact [is] that collectivization wrought greatest havoc in the main, just where the peasants were more intelligent, and more progressive in farming methods, where the pre-war standard of living was the highest. It is not in the primitive Caucasian aul (mountain village) or in the forest of the North that one finds the clearest signs of devastation. The worst famine regions in 1932-34 were in many cases the most fertile and prosperous districts - the rich North Caucasus, the German colonies on the Volga, and in Ukraine, where the people were always noted for their good farming - the fertile "'black-earth" Ukrainian provinces of Kyiv and Poltava. It was not the more backward peasants, but the more progressive and well-to-do, who usually showed the greatest resistance to collectivization, and this is not because they did not understand what the new policy would portend, but because they understood too well".

Another point that should be made, is that nowhere in all the material available for this paper were there reports of famine outbreaks in Russia proper. Chamberlain reached the conclusion that:"Northern and Central Russia and Siberia suffered a good deal of hardship and under-nourishment, but no actual famine". Furthermore, Isaak Mazepa stated that during the famine: "Communist Moscow had posted detachments of the Red Army along the Ukrainian frontier and prohibited refugees from migrating to Soviet Russia where conditions were better". Thus, the evidence concurs that the famine occurred in the most politically unreliable non-Russian republics or regions, which Moscow attempted to keep quarantined in order to let the famine take the desired course.

The famine, as has been suggested, was particularly severe in the countryside; of those who died in the cities, many, if not most, were refugees who had fled to towns from rural areas, hoping that there the conditions would be better. They were disappointed, however, because there was neither relief nor enough jobs available for them: "In the spring of 1933 the starving masses with their grey faces moved into the large cities. They formed lines for the 'buying of bread' or, begging, they surrounded the mills. They died by the thousands in the streets of Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and other cities". Furthermore, the famine was even worse for the independent peasant than it was for those who had joined the collectives. Independent peasants were being completely eliminated - either they entered the collective farms (provided they were allowed to do so), or they died of hunger. The independent peasant in this case is not to be confused with the so-called kulak (rich peasant), for he, as Moscow acknowledged, had already been liquidated (in 1928-32). Rather, as Manning suggests: "The blow of 1933 fell chiefly on the poorer classes. In the same way it was the Ukrainian workmen of the smaller cities who bore the brunt of the hardships. It was the direct triumph of the Russian Bolsheviks over the Ukrainian poor".

In its extent, duration and intensity, the famine of 1932-34 appears to have been one of the worst ever recorded in history. Deaths by starvation ran into millions; it is difficult to make a precise estimate of the number of deaths from the famine. The Soviet government has not only refused official recognition of the famine, but has not published any figures that might be used to calculate mortality. It did not, for instance, publish any crude birth or death rates during the famine period. The only known statement on this subject by a Soviet official came from Petrovsky, President of the Ukrainian SSR, in the course of a dialogue with Fred E. Beal, an American communist who occupied a position as a propagandist among the foreign workers employed at the Kharkiv Tractor Plant (and editor of the American communist factory newspaper Tempo, see p. 253): "In 1933, I had occasion to call on Petrovsky, the President of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, in his office in Kharkiv. I was accompanied by Erenburg, my superior in the cultural-propaganda work at the Tractor Plant. 'Comrade Petrovsky', I said, 'the men at our factory are saying millions of peasants are dying. They say that five million people have died this year, and they hold it up to us as a challenge and mockery. What are we going to tell them?' 'Tell them nothing', answered President Petrovsky. 'What they say is true. We know that millions are dying. That is unfortunate, but the glorious future of the Soviet Union will justify that'. "

Despite the official silence, numerous estimates of the number of victims were made by different persons: highly placed functionaries of the Ukrainian SSR, Western correspondents and travellers in the USSR at the time, former Soviet citizens, and/or witnesses of the tragedy. We shall list the available estimates in round figures and averages:

It should be noted, however, that many of these figures cover only the years of 1932 and part of 1933, mainly in Ukraine and the North Caucasus,* and, therefore, might be considered conservative for the full period of the famine and the total area stricken. There is also some data available for the losses suffered by the non-Ukrainian population. Harry Long reported that certain districts of Ukraine and Byelorussia lost up to 40% of their population; and that "relief organizations count 104,000 dead in 1933 among German peasant colonies alone" (New York Forward, Feb. 19, 1936, etc.). In Kazakhstan, "many mistakes made in 1930-31 led to an enormous destruction of productive forces and the death of many people in the auls [villages]", according to a Khrushchovian historian. In fact, the Kazakh people appear to have suffered a population loss of 1.5 million, attributable to collectivization when their livestock - their only livelihood - was virtually wiped out. A similar process was going on in Uzbekistan and the Turkmen SSR where, "during 1933-34, 40,000 bey and kulak households were liquidated, constituting above 5% of all peasant households". Adding up all these losses, the total figure for the whole area affected seems to surpass 8.0 million people dead from direct starvation alone.

However, the human losses due to collectivization seem to have been higher, if we also take into account the period of "de-kulakization" before the famine actually took place. A Politburo decree of January 30, 1930, "On measures for the liquidation of kulak households in areas of wholesale collectivization", divided the kulaks into three groups: the first category was composed of "the counter-revolutionary aktiv, the organization of terrorist acts and of insurgent organizations"; the second of "the remainder of the counter-revolutionary aktiv, composed of richer kulaks and semi-landowners"; and the third of "all other kulak elements (or podkulachniki, peasants "sympathetic" to the kulaks)."

The first category was to be arrested by the OGPU (political police) and "immediately isolated by being confined in corrective labour camps, the authorities not hesitating to apply the highest measure of punishment [i.e. death] to organizers of terrorist acts, counter-revolutionary actions and insurgent organizations". The second category, like the first, was to be "deported to remote localities of the USSR". The third was to be resettled locally, but since "this category of kulaks, too, carried out an active struggle against the kolkhozes, the necessity arose to resettle it also in the remoter areas". The Politbureau Commission, charged with the preparations for "de-kulakization" in December 1929, used an estimate of five to six million for the number of persons in kulak families. This corresponds roughly with Stalin's estimate in 1928, that kulaks constituted 5% of peasant families, or 1.29 million of the 25.8 million peasant families as of 1929.

It is difficult to estimate the human cost of the pre-famine stage of collectivization, because the most that official sources admit is that "from the beginning of 1930 until the autumn of 1932, 240,757 kulak families - about 1% of the total number of peasant households - were evicted from the areas of solid collectivization". However, Stalin told a meeting of Marxist agricultural experts on December 27, 1929 that "we have moved from a policy of limiting the exploiting tendencies of the kulaks, to a policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class". This he corroborated during an exchange with Churchill on August 15, 1942: Stalin: The collective farm policy was a terrible struggle.

Churchill: I thought you would have found it bad because you were not dealing with a few score thousands of aristocrats or big landowners, but with millions of small men.

Stalin: Ten million. It was fearful. Four years it lasted.

Churchill: What happened?

Stalin: Oh well, many of them agreed to come in with us, but the great bulk were very unpopular and were wiped out.

It should be stressed here that not only the so-called kulaks, but also middle and poor peasants, suffered under "de-kulakization" measures, for it was the peasants' political and national attitude, not their social or economic standing, that determined their fate. Not only the prosperous ones resisted, but the entire peasant population. The term kulak itself was never legally defined, and no official criterion was ever agreed upon for identifying members of this "class" to be liquidated. In view of the above, it is only reasonable to suppose that between five and six million persons were deported to Siberia and the far North,* where many of them perished. The above estimate of human losses concurs with results obtained from statistical analyses of population figures between 1926 and 1937.

From 1924 to 1930 the rates of increase for the USSR (per thousand) were as follows:

The Soviet census of December 17, 1926 showed a population of 147,027,915. Another census was taken on January 6, 1937. The findings were never published because, as was announced in September 1937, the census had been disrupted by the "activity of counter-revolutionary and Trotskyite wreckers". However, a population of 164.2 million was disclosed by Molotov at the Eighteenth Congress of the Communist Party in March. Assuming the average normal rate of increase of population as being 21 per thousand*** for the whole of the period between these two censuses, the population of the USSR in 1937 should have been 184.75 million, rather than 164.2 million as pointed out by Molotov. Consequently, there is a discrepancy of 20.5 million, which suggests that between 1929 and 1935 there occurred a demographic disaster resulting in the loss of 20.5 million people.**** However, the rate of increase did not stay at 21 per thousand but began to drop rapidly after 1930, hitting a known low of 12.3 per thousand in 1935.

If the rate of increase in 1935 (after the famine) was as low as 12.3, then we may safely surmise that during the critical 1932-34 period the rate was still lower or even non-existent (see Timasheff, p 292), since in the famine-stricken republics and other areas the mortality from various causes (deportations, executions and famine) by far exceeded births. Thus, for instance, according to the academician M. V. Ptukha* the natural increase in Ukraine's population from 1924 to 1927 averaged 2.36% annually, and after 1928/29 declined to 1.92%. The Ukrainian population declined from 31 million in 1926 to 28 million in 1934, which clearly corroborates the above.** From the rural aspect, it is also significant to note that between 1929 and 1937 the number of peasant homesteads in the USSR (with a subsequent loss of rural population) decreased from 25.838 million to 19.930 million, which at the rate of five persons per family gives a total of 24. 678 million people affected. The drop between 1929 and 1932 was only 6.7 million people (the figure frequently quoted for the "de-kulakization" process). However, the drop was most precipitate during the 1932-35 famine period involving 17.9 million people. Timasheff calculated that between 1931 and 1936, 15.1 million people "migrated" from rural areas -including those millions who were deported. This leaves us with a figure of 9.574 million people who had not "migrated" and are not accounted for, but whose numbers closely correspond to the toll levied by the famine and other causes.

If those 25 million were not forcibly uprooted or dead between 1929 and 1937, at the established 21 per thousand annual rate of increase, they would have boosted the total population of the USSR by approximately 4.5 million. The general hardship, distress and bleak psychological mood throughout the Soviet Union, coupled with the mass terror of the 30's, brought the normal demographic development to a halt even in those republics and regions of the Soviet Union less directly affected. This triggered a drop in the natural increase (smaller families and rise of abortions and divorce rates)* by a further 6 million. Summing up, this would give us - as pointed out above - a total demographic loss of above 20 million** from 1927 to 1937, of which at least 9 to 10 million died. Of these, 7 to 8 million perished directly from starvation (1932-34), mainly in Ukraine, the Kuban region, the North Caucasus and Kazakhstan, and the rest from causes related to deportations (by the end of 1932 some 2.5 million people were removed from Ukraine, see Manning, p. 95), executions, etc. The remaining 9-10 million probably never had a chance to be born. If this average for the starved (7,500,000) is accepted as probable, then the famine of 1932-34 was among the worst recorded in history.

PART II

Mere statistical data cannot portray the full impact of the famine. To grasp the magnitude of the human tragedy one must turn to eye-witness accounts.While the dying and the dead were to be found at first in the main cities, it was in the villages that the famine was at its worst. Belov was a resident of one of those villages: "The famine of 1932-33 was the most terrible and destructive that the Ukrainian people have ever experienced. The peasants ate dogs, horses, rotten potatoes, the bark of trees, grass --anything they could find. Incidents of cannibalism were not uncommon. The people were like wild beasts, ready to devour one another. And no matter what they did, they went on dying, dying, dying. They died singly or in families. They died everywhere -in the yards, on streetcars and on trains. There was none to bury these victims of Stalinist famine. People travelled thousands of kilometres in search of food - to Siberia, the Caucasus. Many perished on the wayside, or fell into the hands of the militia".

Some might wish to classify these types of accounts as emotional, exaggerated, or isolated events. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Similar gruesome accounts were provided by scores of other people from different villages and districts, by foreigners and highly placed people both in the USSR and abroad. We have already cited men like Chamberlin, Manning, Beal, Taudul, Lang, Lyons, Ammende, and others in whose articles and reports such disturbing accounts can also be found. Up to fifty similar testimonies made by individuals associated at the time with different villages situated in different counties, districts or provinces in Ukraine affected by the famine, were collected in a book.

The most ghastly phase of the famine was cannibalism, which appears to have been commonplace. References to this are found in much of the material already cited. There are, obviously, no records as to what extent cannibalism was commonplace, but it is pretty revealing that "in many places sausages were found that were made of human flesh, either of people who had died, or were killed for food". The extent of this practice is shown by the fact that in 1936, among the prisoners of Solovki, there were 325 persons guilty of cannibalism, 75 men and 250 women. But the nightmare in all its tragedy, and the cynicism of the Kremlin administrative apparatus in Ukraine and other areas affected by the famine, is revealed in what Harry Lang saw and recorded: "In the office of a Soviet functionary I saw a poster on the wall which struck my attention. It showed a picture of a mother in distress, with a swollen child at her feet, and over the picture was the inscription: EATING OF DEAD CHILDREN IS BARBARISM. A Soviet official explained to me: 'We distributed such posters in hundreds of villages, especially in Ukraine. We had to'."

Causes of the Famine

Famine throughout history has generally been caused by some natural phenomenon (drought, disease, pests, etc.) or war. The famine in Ukraine, the Kuban region, the North Caucasus and Kazakhstan does not seem to have been immediately caused by any of these factors. In this case, the famine was - to an extent perhaps unparallelled in history - man-made. Let us, then, turn to the analysis of production, procurement and famine relief during this period.

The most striking feature of food production during the famine period is that while it was less than average, it was not a failure, as shown in the following table:

Thus, total food production was lowest in 1932, before the worst year of the famine. Even so, for all three groups the yield was below the total 1926-30 average by only 10%. Consequently, it hardly seems possible that this drop in basic foodstuff production in regions termed the "granary" of Europe resulted in the deaths of 7.5 million people. Even this decrease can be attributed more to human causes rather than natural. While it appears that certain districts may have suffered from some drought and hot dry winds in 1932, "weather conditions were normal for the 1932 crop", and consequently, "the famine was correctly characterized as man-made".

The greater problem was the disrupted state of agriculture. The breakdown was largely brought about by the policies of the Kremlin - forced collectivization, violent requisition of food, elimination of millions of productive peasants (so-called kulaks), wide-spread terror, etc. Not only were the peasant masses weakened and driven to destruction by their losses, but they were also antagonized. The result was general apathy and discouragement in tending the crops. In addition, there was a noted livestock mortality due to collectivization which produced an acute shortage of draft power. In view of the above - to use Dalrymple's expression - it's a wonder that the average crop yields of 1931, 1932, and 1933 were not lower than the registered maximum of ll% in 1932. This certainly points to the great productive potential of the areas affected by the famine, even in the face of adverse conditions - natural or provoked.

Although the crop was 10% lower, there is plenty of evidence that there was enough to keep the population of the famine areas alive: In 1941, when the Germans invaded Ukraine, they found in the Academy of Sciences in Kyiv the statistics of the crop harvested in 1932. These figures proved that the yield was sufficient to feed the Ukrainian population for two years and four months and to seed all the fields. The above chart table appears to corroborate to a certain extent this finding in the Academy of Sciences, since the crop during the critical period of 1932-33 yielded an average of 122.2 million tons - only 5.9% lower than the average of 129.8 million tons for the relatively normal period of 1926-30. Even if we were to assume that this lower percentage may have caused food shortages, it was still the general testimony of the peasants that they could have "pulled through" if the authorities had not carried out heavy requisitions of food stuffs.

The reason for the below-average crop years (see above table) actually turning into famine years was the procurement which kept draining off from the population the last possible reserves of food. The methods of procurement were legally reinforced through a decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of the Peoples' Commissar of the USSR, of August 7, 1932, "on the guarding of state property"; it ordered that all collective farm property (cattle, standing crops and agricultural produce) should henceforth be considered state property, "sacred and inviolable". Those guilty of offences against such "state property" were to be considered "enemies of the people". There were only two penalties for its theft: execution by shooting and under certain circumstances imprisonment for no less than 10 years with total confiscation of private property. The decree was written by Stalin himself. The extent of procurement of grain can be seen from the following table:

Although the grain production over the three years of famine conditions decreased by ll%, the grain procurements increased by an average of 31% going as high as 44%. Thus, the rural population was deprived yearly of about 48% (36 million tons) of grain with respect to the total average (1927-31) of 75.1 million tons. However, it should be taken into account that the above procurement figures are for the whole of the Union. The breakdown into individual regions would show a different picture. Thus, according to official figures, the estimate of the general harvest in Ukraine in 1932 was the fictitious figure of 894 million poods [1 ton = 61 poods] or 14.65 million tons of grain, in order to justify the exorbitant quota set at 385 million poods (6.3 million tons). By collecting in Ukraine 225 million poods (4.2 million tons) from the 1932 harvest and an additional 145 million poods (2.3 million tons) to be set aside for "seeding" (since the seeding supply of grain had already been taken in 1931 from kolkhozes), the state actually deprived the peasants of at least 130 million poods (2 million tons) of grain destined as provisions. Since those extra 7 million tons or so of grain were largely existent on paper, the lack of grain due to requisitioning made itself felt in the tragic winter and spring of 1933. A similar plundering occurred in the North Caucasus as well.*

In April 1929, Stalin said: "Through natural flow we are able to procure about 5.0 to 5.8 million tons. The residual 2.5 million have to be taken through organized pressure." Then he added with great emphasis: "The grain procurements have to be organized." [Stalin's italics] Thus, during the 1931-32 crop year the tried "iron broom" technique of the period of "war communism" was applied gain. From the government point of view, the policy seems to have worked because in that period, procurement achieved a record level. (see table)

The same procedure was used during the 1932-33 period: "That autumn (following the harvest in 1932) the red broom passed over the kolhozy and the individual plots, sweeping the 'surplus' for the state out of the barns and corn cribs. In the search for 'surplusses' everything was collected. The farms were cleaned out even more thoroughly than the kulak had been". However, grain deliveries were beginning to lag since reserve stocks -as pointed out above - had already been cleaned out, and the Ukrainian communist leadership of the country was apparently getting too soft-hearted and nationally minded for the Russians in Moscow.* Therefore, early in 1930, Postyshev was sent to Ukraine as a special plenipotentiary of the Central Committee. He brought with him about 10,000 party workers from the Russian Republic. The group set to work and the last reserves of grain, which had been buried in the ground by the desperate peasants, were dug up and confiscated. Their actions were "marked by the utmost severity... the detachments carried off not only grain but everything edible". Muggeridge observed the following: "They had gone over the country like a swarm of locusts and taken away everything edible; they shot and exiled thousands of peasants, sometimes whole villages; they reduced some of the most fertile land in the world to a melancholy desert".

Mikhail Sholokhov (a prominent novelist) complained to Stalin about the situation in a letter dated April 16, 1933, but in vain. Stalin cynically replied that it was "as clear as broad daylight that the esteemed grain growers are not such inoffensive people as it might appear from afar " and that they "were essentially conducting a 'quiet' war against Soviet rule. A war of starvation, dear Comrade Sholokhov".106a

In the summer of 1933, the government established obligatory deliveries of grain, the assessment being made by hectare. The harvest was organized like a military offensive; army detachments were placed to guard the grain in the fields, and airplanes were constantly flying over the fields as a precaution against "enemies". If the set quotas were not delivered, then those officials and peasants responsible were dealt with according to Stalin's decree of August 7, 1932 - as "enemies of the people". They were executed or deported, as happened with an alleged conspiracy in the Peoples' Commissariat of Agriculture and State Farming. The accused were charged with using their authority to wreck tractors and to disorganize sowing, harvesting and threshing in order "to create famine (italics added) in the country". As a result, 35 were shot and 40 were deported (Izvestia, March 12, 1933, p. 2). When it was all over the grain requisitions for the period of 1933-34 were even higher than for 1931-32, and about 24% above the 1932-33 rate as shown in the table. Thus, the famine continued to levy its toll well into 1934.

It has been suggested that the immediate cause of the famine was the ruthless food procurement policy of the regime. The main long-term reasons behind it were the Kremlin's desire to impose its control especially in the non-Russian territories, to obtain foreign exchange, to provide for a military war chest, to "feed" the industrial population, and finally, to prevent "rural overpopulation".

In order to obtain control over agriculture, Moscow placed great emphasis on state and collective farms tied in with Machine Tractor Stations, which proved to be quite useful for the regime in this respect. The only problem was that the peasants were not interested in joining the collective farms. The reason for this lies in the fact that the very essence of the collectivization scheme was organically alien to the psychology, traditions and way of life of the people of Ukraine and Kuban, who are individualistic with an inherent sense of and respect for private property. This proved to be in complete opposition to Russian peasant mentality where the principle of community ownership of land had already taken root through such traditional institutions as mirobshchina - an older version of the kolkhoz. In view of this, it should not be surprising that the Russian peasants complied without too much hesitation. When the peasants' recalcitrance to submit was enhanced further by requisitions of food, it soon became apparent that the ensuing famine would provide a method for driving them into the collective or out of existence. If conditions were tough on the collective farms, Moscow made sure that it was even worse for the individual farmers.

As the collectivization and famine grew in intensity, Moscow was confronted with a wide-spread resistance which took on an "expression of ultimate human hopelessness, a natural catastrophy of the human spirit, a non-cooperation movement that was akin to mass-suicide". Stalin, however, considered this as deliberate sabotage. Consequently, he was not prepared to lower the grain demands. But not all resistance was passive. Scores of acts of violence and mass uprisings took place during the period of collectivization. They took place in Odessa province, Kherson province and the Kamenets-Podilsk district of Vinnytsia province. In Chernihiv province (Horodno, Tupychiv and Snov districts) peasant uprisings had the support of the 21st Chernihiv regiment, and were crushed only after major concentrations of GPU and regular army troops were dispatched against them. Other revolts occurred in the Tarashcha district of Volyn province and in the Mykhailivka, Pereshchepyna and Pavlograd districts of Dnipropetrovsk province. All of the above districts are located in Ukraine.

Resistance to collectivization was widespread in other non-Russian republics and areas of the USSR as well - especially in the Kuban region, the Caucasus, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Thousands of party officials were killed and tens of thousands of rebels executed or deported. The above situation was officially acknowledged in the Soviet press and even in the official History of the CPSU: "The kulaks carried on malicious propaganda against the collective farm movement , assassinated rural Communists, chairmen of collective farms, rural newspaper correspondents and activists. The enemies of Soviet power calculated that the excesses and mistakes committed in the processes of collectivization would incense the peasantry and provoke mass anti-Soviet revolts. Here and there they succeeded in inciting the peasants to anti-Soviet actions. In the second half of February 1930, as a result of the mistake made in collectivization, dangerous signs of resentment on the part of the peasant masses made themselves felt in a number of areas of the country." [italics added] The Kremlin's struggle against the peasantry soon acquired national and political traits in the non-Russian territories. Thus, the purpose of Stalin's offensive against Ukraine was not only to force collectivization on the stubborn peasants, but also to destroy the spiritual and biological backbone of the nation.

In the late twenties, Ukraine was one of the most thriving countries in Eastern Europe. Economically (in the production of steel, coal, agriculture), it was the most powerful republic in the USSR; numerically, it was second only to Russia; culturally, it boasted great achievements. It was the period of modern Ukrainian renaissance, whose forces were released during the national revolution of 1917-21, and which led to the establishment of the Ukrainian National Republic. With the fall of the independent state, the unleashed national forces continued to mould the country into a clearly defined national, economic and cultural organism overriding all the centralizing attempts of Moscow.* This trend was clearly voiced by the leading officials of Soviet Ukraine, such as Skrypnyk (Commissar of Education and the Chief of Derzhplan of Ukr. SSR until his death in 1933) and M. Khvylovyj** (a leading literary figure). Their words clearly delineate the Ukrainian position: "Organizing the Soviet Union , we guarantee each separate people its free development. And no one suggests that his people, his separate culture should dominate the territory of the Soviet Union. We value and recognise the importance of Russian culture , but apart from this, not one conscious worker or peasant tries to suggest that the Russian language, the Russian culture should dominate the territory of our Union. The Russian people have their territory, they have their culture, but on other territories where the majority of the population consists of Bashkirs, Ukrainians, Georgians, Karelions, where Russians form a national minority, there must be guaranteed the full independence of each separate people". (M. Skrypnyk) "The Ukrainian economy is not Russian and cannot be so, if only because the Ukrainian culture, which emanates from the economic structure [of the country] and in turn influences it, bears characteristic forms and features. So does our economy. In a word - the [Soviet] Union remains a Union and Ukraine is an independent state". (M. Khvylovyj)

It was clear then that such a Ukrainian stand on national, cultural and economic issues posed a direct threat to Moscow's growing hegemony in Eastern Europe and Russian empire building. Stalin sensed the danger and expressed his apprehension to Kaganovich in a letter written as early as April 26, 1926, where he stated that the Ukrainian stand could "assume the character of a struggle for the alienation of Ukrainian culture and social life from the common Soviet cultural and social life, of a struggle against Moscow and the Russians in general". Moscow reacted, and in 1930 the first Ukrainian political trial took place in Kharkiv. Forty-five individuals were accused of being involved with the "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine". In 1931, as a result of the growing resistance of the peasants (on economic and national grounds) to collectivization, and faced with the imminent danger of a general peasant revolt (which was already spreading as we have seen), Moscow decided to eliminate all those who could be considered as being connected with the peasantry, and,who might organize them and become their leaders. Regardless of whether they were loyal or not to Soviet Ukraine in the preceeding years, there began a wholesale and systematic destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the leading cadres of the country. In 1931, the GPU professed to have discovered a Ukrainian organisation called ''The National Centre". In connection with this, Hulubovych (former head of the Rada government and member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Brest-Litovsk negotiations), Shershel, Mazurenko and other politicians were shot. This was followed by thousands of new arrests and executions. In 1933, the GPU again declared that they had discovered a military conspiracy on the part of a "secret military organisation". After a theatrical trial, Kotsiubynskyi (Vice-President of the Ukrainian Council of Peoples' Commissars), Kovnar (Commissar of Agriculture), and scores of other persons who had occupied important posts in the army or administration, were shot. Also, in the same year, Skrypnyk (Head of the Ukrainian State Plan) committed suicide (July 7, 1933).

In 1933 Pavel Postyshev* replaced Kaganovich as Stalin's lieutenant in Ukraine. The speech he delivered at the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine is clearly indicative of Moscow's policy: "In Ukraine our leading party members and Comrade Stalin himself are specially hated. The class enemy has been to a good school in this country [Ukraine] and has learned how to struggle against Soviet rule. In Ukraine, there are many counter-revolutionary parties and organizations. Kharkiv [then the capital of Ukraine] has gradually become the centre of attraction for all sorts of nationalistic and other counter-revolutionary organizations. They have all been drawn to this centre and they have spread their webs all over Ukraine. You remember, Comrades, when twenty Secretaries of Party Regional Committees dared to declare that it was impossible to fulfil the Harvest Plan?" It should be kept in mind that at the same time the Ukrainian countryside was starving. [italics added] The stage was set for the final assault which had begun in 1930, and Postyshev in his short reign purged the Communist Party of Ukraine of a quarter of its strength.* Thousands were shot and/or deported. A main characteristic of the 1933 purge of Communist Party members in Ukraine was the fact that the bulk of the purged were of Ukrainian origin and the vacancies created, especially in higher party positions, were filled mainly by non-Ukrainian personnel** who came chiefly from Russia.

However, this was not the end yet. Nothing was left untouched. Every field of cultural, scholarly and scientific endeavour in Ukraine was affected by the purge. The following are some of the institutions that were affected: the All Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, the Agriculture Academy, the Research Institute of the Deaf and Dumb, the Research Institute of Constitution and Law, the Shevchenko Research Institute of Literary Scholarship, the Ukrainian State Publishing House, the Book-Union Co-operative Publishing House, the Ukrainian School of Painting, the Ukrainian Film Industry, the Institute of the History of Ukrainian Culture, and numerous literary organizations such as "Vaplite" (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature), etc. At least sixty leading figures of these organizations were either banished to labour camps or shot. On the literary scene, the devastation was more complete. In 1930, 259 Ukrainian writers were publishing their works; in 1938, only 36 of the original number remained. Of the 223 who disappeared, 17 are known to have been shot immediately, 8 committed suicide, 175 were either banished, shot, died in the camps, or were forcefully excluded from literary work; the fate of 16 is unknown and 7 died of natural causes. Since the death of Stalin, of those 223 who disappeared, 76 writers were posthumously "rehabilitated". Thus far, official sources have admitted that 76 of the 223 were liquidated. Many of the unaccounted-for very likely met a similar end. In the religious sphere, the All-Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was dissolved and thousands of Church officials, clergy and lay members were deported or shot. All were repressed on the grounds that: "they spread nationalistic poison; organized sabotage in industry, transport and the rural economy; strove to upset the economy of Ukraine, to create famine, and to prepare a counter-revolutionary uprising". [italics added]

It is also significant to note that behind this massacre, in all walks of Ukrainian life, stood L. Kaganovich, P. Postyshev and S. Kossior - all three of them non-Ukrainians who nevertheless occupied key positions on behalf of Moscow in the Communist Party of Ukraine and the government. Thus, even their individual backgrounds were helpful to them in the execution of their tasks in Ukraine.

By 1938 it was all over, and another battle in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict came to a tragic end. It is necessary to dwell extensively on this subject because it is against the background of Ukrainian history of the twenties and thirties that we must study the famine of 1932-34 and the role it played in Moscow's plans and policies toward the non-Russian nations. This cannot be overlooked, because the collectivization and famine had exactly coincided with the beginning of the attack on the political, economic and cultural life of Ukraine. The famine became a handy instrument for the solution of the national question in the USSR: "The famine established the fact that in the economic sphere, Moscow could direct Ukrainian life as it would,* and it went hand in hand with the attempt to exterminate the old Ukrainian cultural life".

Moscow's problem of procurement of foreign exchange can also be examined in relation to the famine. Stalin, in the First Five-Year Plan, started from the assumption that a program of rapid industrialization was imperative and that a wholesale socialization of agriculture could guarantee the grain reserves to carry it forward. As we have seen, Stalin's plan involved the preliminary application of "emergency measures" in order to expropriate the surpluses which were allegedly being hoarded. Thus, the main burden of accumulating an industrialization fund was to be transferred to the countryside. The advocates of this plan professed to believe that rapid industrialization could be combined with an increase in consumption as the result of the application of modern technical methods to agriculture. This proved to be totally unrealistic. Mechanization and industrialization could only be introduced slowly; meanwhile, the state faced the problem of extracting the grain from the collectives and state farms to pay for the industrial base on which the production of tractors and other agricultural implements depended.

Strictly from the point of view of economics, this mistake of the First Five-Year Plan threw the Soviet economy into a vicious cycle from which it never recovered. Applied on a large scale, without regard to the availability of improved machinery and the attitude of a multi-national peasantry, collectivization was a failure. Agricultural production decreased and livestock was decimated.* The Plan foresaw the transformation of the USSR into a "mixed society", one that was both agricultural and industrial. To achieve this end, the output of industry had to be increased by 150% and that of agriculture by 50%. Since financially this was to prove far more costly than expected, the planners had to choose, either to slow down or abandon the whole enterprise, or to find another way of financing it. They chose the second alternative. Thus, their real sources of investment became: 1) expropriation in the countryside; 2) decrease of real wages to starvation level; 3) depreciation of currency. None of this was foreseen by the Plan. In addition to the failure of the financial plan, there are other vital aspects to take into consideration. The Plan foresaw increasing efficiency of labour. In reality, its efficiency decreased, owing to the starvation standard of living, the introduction into the labour class of millions of peasants without any technical training, and the inefficient means ( use of force) of production in order to fulfill unrealistic quotas, which resulted in the waste of equipment and human labour, and in low quality products.

Nevertheless, heavy industrialization advanced* while other vital aspects of the economy, such as agriculture and light industry, were left in ruins, preventing the total recovery of the economy.** This fact should not be overlooked when discussing the First Five-Year Plan, and neither should the question whether it was economically feasible to build up one aspect of the economy at the expense of another with all the material and human losses it brought about. Thus, in the light of the above it is highly questionable whether under such circumstances Moscow's use of food to obtain foreign exchange for allegedly industrial investments at home was practical - notwithstanding the moral aspects of such unprecedented "economic" practices.

However, the export of food went on with a total disregard for the chaos that was unleashed in all sectors of the economy, and for the disruption of human life, in particular in the republics and areas directly affected. An examination of Soviet export and import statistics for the calendar years of 1932 and 1933 yield the following figures:

Accordingly, the export of food accounted for 24.3% and 20% of the value of all Soviet exports in 1932 and 1933, respectively. Grain was the largest food item, representing 9.0% and 8.1% of the total export. The import of food accounted for 10% and 8.2% of the value of all imports in 1932 and 1933. Tea, which has no nutritive value, was one of the largest single items, representing 1.7% of the total import (tea largely made up the unprocessed "other" category). On balance, there was a net export of food during the two critical years. In 1932, exports of food were worth about twice as much as imports. In 1933 (at the height of the famine) they were worth three and a half time as much. In 1932, the net value of these exports was 242.5 million roubles, and in 1933, 246.2 million roubles - or about $60.6 million in 1932, and $61.5 million in 1933. In terms of weight, net grain exports totalled 1.70 million tons in 1932, and 1.84 million tons in 1933, which represented 6.2% and 7.9% of the total of all Soviet trade exports for 1932 and 1933 respectively. Using the suggested rate of exchange, the value of these net grain exports was 31.2 million dollars in 1932 and 34.3 million dollars in 1933 - a total of 65.5 million dollars. These rather low figures clearly suggest that exports of grain in 1932 and 1933 and the "profits" made were not of such "vital" importance that their reduction would have affected in any significant way the Soviet export program and procurement of foreign exchange necessary for industrialization. Besides, the economic losses suffered by the disruption of agriculture far exceeded these "gains".

We have already established that according to official sources (see Kossior, note 100) about 2 million tons of grain destined as provisions for the peasants had been requisitioned in 1932/beginning of 1933. Therefore, if at least half of the grain exported in 1932 and 1933 (3.54 mill. tons) had been retained in the famine areas, millions of lives would have been saved without affecting the "process of industrialization" and the "success" of the First Five-Year Plan. It should be clear then that the transformation of the USSR into a "mixed society" through industrialization could not have been the main and only motive for forced collectivization and procurement that produced the famine. Clearly, Moscow sold 7,500,000 human lives for the meagre price of 65.5 million dollars, at the rate of eight dollars and sixty cents ($8.60) per each Ukrainian man, woman and child who starved to death.

It was, of course, well known by the starving population that food was being exported. Belov recounts that the peasants were told that " the industrialization of the country demanded grain and sacrifices from them." On Kravchenko's farm - where half of the population had perished from hunger - butter was steadily made for export. The manager of the collective farm store commented: "You see, starvation is one thing and foreign exchange is another".

A considerable proportion of the grain and food procured was also placed in reserve in a military "war chest".* Some of this grain was quietly used to establish deposits of grain throughout the Soviet Union. Viktor Kravchenko came across what appears to have been such a cache at a local railroad station in the autumn of 1933. Being concealed by officialdom, it had remained untouched even though half the population of his village died of famine the previous winter, as was mentioned above. He noted that such huge reserves existed "in many other parts of the country, while peasants in those very regions died of hunger". The fact grain was kept idle in deposits during the famine should be sufficient to change the mind of the apologists of the Soviet "industrialization" drive, since that grain was neither used for obtaining capital for industrial investment nor used to feed the starving population. It is clear that Stalin intentionally did not release the reserves of grain.

Although the workers were not starving, there was a consensus of opinion that the food shortages were severe. Eugene Lyons records that "... the search for food, the struggle for sheer physical subsistence monopolized men's minds and drained their energies. Men changed their trades, their creeds, their friends in the hope of a little more sunflower seed oil or tea or bread. I saw them risk their careers or put themselves in danger of exile to a concentration camp for an extra ration". Fred Beal, a former communist, who was the public relations director and contact man for the foreign workers in the Kharkiv tractor plant, records that even "the large colony of privileged foreign workers subsisted on a starvation diet". But more appalling than this was the fact that those foreigners "were in despair at having to work alongside starving, stupefied and dazed native workers". The poor food conditions led to a turnover problem as workers fled from plant to plant in order to secure enough food. On November 17, 1932, W. Duranty reported from Moscow: "The Soviet law permitting the dismissal of a worker if he is absent from his job , was made more drastic today by a decree signed by President Kalinin and Premier Molotov. This decree permits the dismissal of a worker for a single day's absence, with a further penalty of deprivation of his food and goods, his ration book and his living quarters . This is the first of the measures foreshadowed yesterday by the newspaper Pravda to counteract the high labour turnover, which has reached such a point that every worker in heavy industry changes his job once a year - that is, statistics quoted by Pravda show that the annual labour turnover is more than 100 per cent".

At the beginning of 1933 (the height of the famine in Ukraine), Moscow opened the so-called Torgsin stores (Torgovia z inostrantsiabi - trade with foreigners) in urban areas, where grain was sold at 4 karbovantsi (Ukrainian equivalent for roubles) for 1 kg (2 pounds) of white and 3 karb. for 1 kg of black bread. The peasant received from the government, for the obligatory "sale" of grain, 90 kopeks for 16 kg of wheat. These commercial prices had to be paid-for in foreign currency or in gold or silver. This was corroborated even by the Soviet Ukrainian writer Ivan Stadniuk in his novel People are not Angels: "Word went around the village that a shop with the wonderful name "Torgsin" had opened in Vinnytsia. It was possible to exchange gold and silver there for bread, flour, barley and sugar". [italics added] Thus, the urban population was also made to contribute to the raising of foreign exchange". On August 20, 1933, Moscow doubled the price of bread and 1 kg of bread was known to have cost as much as 15 rubles "in a North Caucasus industrial town". This, in spite of a good crop harvested that year (70.1 million tons of grain - see table III).

It is hard to see how this minimal amount of food directed to feed the urban and industrial population could also be blamed for the famine. If it were just a matter of feeding the industrial forces, the food supply would have been quite sufficient. Finally, the claim that rural overpopulation may have been the cause of famine does not seem to hold water either. Although Soviet sources indicate that there was at least an excess of 10°/o of rural population at that time, overpopulation was proportionally greater outside the area hit by famine. This also points to the fact that the famine was intentional, since Postyshev, who besides his official post was also general inspector of the Ministry of Grain Production for resettlement, was given the general task of preparing a plan for immigration to Ukraine from various parts of the Soviet Union. The dislocation of population was worked out in detail. Millions of Russians, Byelorussians, Uzbeks, etc. were to be sent in. Special attention was devoted to the region close to Russia on the left bank of the Dnipro (Dnieper) River, and there was talk at one time of annexing the Kharkiv-Donbas industrial region to the Russian Republic. Some of those "colonization" plans seem to have been put into effect because in 1926 there were 2.8 million Russians living on Ukrainian territory, and as of 1959 their number increased to 7.1 million - about 44°/o of all Russians living outside the RSFSR - constituting the largest national minority in the whole of the Soviet Union.

Recapitulating on the causes of the famine, there is a curious parallel in this case with the action of the Soviet government in 1921 when it not only withheld news of famine conditions in Ukraine, but also levied a food tax and continued to ship out grain from the famine-stricken areas in Ukraine to Russia (Volga region, Samara, Saratov, Uralsk, etc.). Fisher indicated that one cannot escape the feeling that fear or political expediency, or both, influenced the official famine policy in those regions [Ukraine]. Vernon Aspaturian voiced a similar opinion: "Ukrainians experienced a sharp decline in their percentage of the total population of the USSR (21.2°/o in 1926 vs 17.8% in 1959). Perceiving in this intractable nationality a rival centre of power to that of Moscow, Stalin pursued a ruthless policy of keeping it in check".

The Famine and the Outside World

In light of what we have seen so far, it is small wonder that Moscow was not interested in providing relief to famine victims. Rather than relax its economic and political pressures, it proceeded as if there was no famine at all. Neither did it lighten the requisition policies nor allow outside famine relief - contrary to the practice used during a similarly-induced disaster in 1921-23, when the greatest famine programs in history were carried out as part of the "inauguration" of the "most progressive politico-economical system ever devised".

Nevertheless, many aid organizations were established. For example, on July 14, 1933, a "Civic Relief Committee for Starving Soviet Ukraine" was set up in Lviv (Lemberg), western Ukraine. Similar groups sprung up in Romania, Czecho-slovakia, France, Germany, Canada and the United States. The famine was the main issue at the Congress of European Minorities in Berne, Switzerland on September 16-19, 1933. And on December 16-17, 1933, an "International Conference for the Relief of the Starving" was held in Vienna. By the summer of 1934 an Inter-Confessional and International Aid Committee for the starvation districts in the Soviet Union had been established in Europe with Dr. Ammende as Secretary. Similarly, an English branch of H. H. Elizabeth Skoropadsky's Ukrainian relief fund came into being, None of these groups were ever allowed by Moscow to carry out their relief plans. Some of the food packages and money that were sent in never reached their destinations. On visiting their home village near Kyiv in the summer of 1933, an American couple , Mr. and Mrs. Stebalo , found that "food and money that had been sent to relatives had never been delivered during the past year".

It has been suggested that Moscow's attitude was not that of great concern for the starving. The Kremlin was less concerned with human life than it was with farm animals. Following their visit, Mr. and Mrs. Stebalo reported that "it is true that cannibalism is being punished, but not nearly as severely as say the theft of a horse or a cow from a collective farm". Ammende also stated that "Moscow is infinitely more anxious to preserve and even increase the number of draft oxen than to render aid to the suffering population. And, indeed, from the point of view of Russian interests, the real catastrophe is not the mortality from starvation, but the unexpected loss of draft oxen due to collectivization". Thus, as has been already indicated, the famine was man-made. This conclusion was already reached as early as January of 1933. the New York Times was perhaps one of the first to make that charge by stating on January 1, 1933, that the hunger did not come upon the Soviet Union "as an act of God; it is man-made". This point did not escape the starving either. As one told Mr. and Mrs. Stebalo in the summer of 1933, "it is they who are killing us. They want us to die. It is an organized famine". Practically everyone concurred in this charge.

In Moscow, they preferred to consider the famine as "war". Even Stalin referred to it as "war" in his reply to Sholokhov. And Hataevich (Secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Committee and member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party) stated in Ukraine during the harvest of 1933: "A ruthless struggle is going on between the peasantry and our regime. It is a struggle to the death. This year was a test of our strength and their endurance. It took a famine to show them who is master here. It has cost millions of lives, but the collective farm system is here to stay. We have won the war". [italics added] Stalin and Hataevich were correct in their assessment of the situation, for they knew better than anyone else the motives behind it. It certainly was a war - a war between Moscow and the non-Russian nationalities, Ukraine in particular.

Another peculiar characteristic of the 1932-34 famine is Moscow's persistant attempts to conceal it. This is in contrast to the situation in 1921-23 when the Bolsheviks at least acknowledged the famine and accepted about 66 million dollars worth of American relief alone It is not likely that Moscow chose to conceal the famine in order to avoid being put under pressure to cut off exports by accepting relief, because in the autumn of 1922, for instance, Moscow announced its intention to export food and at the same time asked foreign organizations to provide relief for four million people who were on the verge of starvation. This kind of inhuman policy was not new to the Russian rulers during the Tsarist period, when food had also been exported and relief accepted during the famines of 1911, 1906, and 1891. During the famine of 1946-47, similar practices were in effect, as revealed by Khrushchev: "The method [Stalin's and Molotov's] was like this: they sold grain abroad, while in some regions people were swollen with hunger and even dying from lack of bread. Yes, comrades, it is a fact that in 1947 in many of the country's oblasts people were dying from hunger. But grain was at this time being exported!" (Pravda, Dec. 10, 1963) Consequently, the reason for Moscow's desire to hide the famine lies in the objective to crush the resistance of alien masses and to achieve total economic and political control over all constituent members of the Soviet Union. If the Soviets were to acknowledge the famine and accept relief [they could not acknowledge the famine and refuse aid at the same time], it would mean a concession if not a lost battle in Moscow's "war" on other nationalities (see notes 166 and 167). This, obviously, they could not do, for concessions do not come into play in "a struggle to the death". (See Hataevich note 167)

Another equally important reason was, undoubtedly, the matter of Soviet prestige. The Soviets had been trying to create an impression of an economic and social success of the First Five-Year Plan and of its "crucial" importance: "The results of the First Five-Year Plan were of tremendous international significance. The Soviet Union had demonstrated to the whole world the superiority of the planned socialist system of economy over the capitalist system ." [italics added ] Therefore, to admit to the whole world the existence of a famine (and thereby, open the Iron Curtain to the flow of foreign "bourgeois" relief) would have hardly been the kind of triumphal conclusion of the First Five-Year Plan that the leaders in the Kremlin wanted. It is true, however, that the results of the First Five-Year Plan were of "tremendous international significance" for they showed what devastating results unlimited power, placed in the hands of a ruthless clique, could produce. But more than prestige was at stake. The Soviets, in this period, were working for: a) diplomatic recognition by the United States and other countries; b) admission into the League of Nations; c) "non-aggression" pacts with several European nations; and d) improvement of trade relations. If the story of the famine were made known, Moscow's chances for success on the foreign relations front would have been diminished , because the famine was man-made, and because nothing was done on the part of the Soviets to alleviate it.

In the case of American recognition of the USSR, Ukrainian groups in the United States did their best to focus attention on the famine. A delegation was even sent to President Roosevelt to ask for an investigation of conditions in Ukraine before granting recognition. Public pronouncements were made and demonstrations held, with the usual attack from American communists. In the same period, a number of relief organizations, as well as government and church officials, tried to raise the curtain of silence that concealed the famine, unfortunately without much success. While these actions were annoying to Moscow, they proved to be no hindrance to its objectives, for on November 16, 1933, the U.S. gave diplomatic recognition to the USSR; on September 18, 1934, the Soviet Union was admitted into the League of Nations, and signed a series of treaties with various countries. Had the facts about the famine been better known to the outside world, Soviet diplomatic successes may not have come as readily as they did. It should also be pointed out that at that time the Nazis came to power, and this diverted world attention from the famine.

In order to conceal the famine, Moscow's first step was to intensify its control over the representatives of the foreign press in the Soviet Union. This was not difficult because the entire foreign press corps was located in Moscow, and the correspondents could stay only as long as the Soviet authorities saw fit. Moreover, their dispatches were subject to official clearance. Thus, even though correspondents had a good idea of what was going on outside Moscow, they were reluctant to report anything that would displease the authorities and jeopardize their stay in the Soviet Union. The following is an example of the euphemisms used to describe the Ukrainian Holodomor : "There is no actual starvation or death from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition".

In order to disclose fully the theory behind this journalistic understatement, we shall now cite at length Eugene Lyons, a veteran Moscow correspondent for United Press International : "Duranty's statement characterizes sufficiently the whole shabby episode of our failure to report honestly the gruesome famine of 1932-34 . We were prohibited to make personal investigation. The episode, indeed, reflects little glory on world journalism as a whole. Not a single American newspaper or press agency protested publicly against the astonishing and almost unprecedented confinement of its correspondents in the Soviet capital or troubled to probe for the cause of this extraordinary measure. The dividing line between "heavy loss of life through food shortage" and famine is rather tenuous. Such verbal finessing made little difference to the millions of dead or dying, to the refugees who knocked at doors begging for bread, to the lines of ragged peasants stretching from Torgsin doors in the famine area waiting to exchange their wedding rings and silver trinkets for bread.Maurice Hindus, though among the most industrious apologists for Stalin, was kept waiting nearly a month for a visa during the famine and finally was admitted on condition that he should not go outside Moscow. Forced by competitive journalism to jockey for the inside track with officials, it would have been professional suicide to make an issue of the famine at this particular time. We were summoned to the Press Department, one by one, and instructed not to venture out of Moscow without submitting a detailed itinerary and having it officially sanctioned (someone by the name of Umansky of the Soviet Press Department was the head censor of the foreign press corps). The same department which daily issued denials of the famine now acted to prevent the U.S. from seeing that famine, our brief cables about all this in some obscure corner of the paper. The world press accepted with complete equanimity the virtual expulsion of all its representatives from all of the Soviet Union except Moscow. It agreed without protest to a partnership in this macabre hoax.Belatedly, the world had awakened to the famine situation. We were able to write honestly that "to speak of famine now is ridiculous". We did not always bother to add that we had failed to speak of it or at best mumbled incomprehensibly then, when it was not ridiculous".

Despite this situation, some journalists like Gareth Jones (at one time secretary to Lloyd George) and Malcolm Muggeridge (of the Fortnightly Review), who somehow managed secretly to get into the famine area, reported extensively on the matter.However, steps were immediately taken to discredit them by their fellow correspondents who remained in Moscow, as was the case with Gareth Jones when he returned to the West. Walter Duranty of the New York Times immediately cabled a denial of the famine, dedicating his whole report to refuting Jones with cynical statements such as: "Mr. Jones is a man of keen and active mind, and he has taken trouble to learn Russian, which he speaks with considerable fluency, but the writer thought Mr. Jones' judgment was somewhat hasty . It appeared that he made a forty-mile walk through villages in the neighbourhood of Kharkov and found the conditions sad ." And he concludes his "refutation" by stating that "there is no actual death from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition".

However, Gareth Jones replied to Duranty, describing in detail where he obtained his information about the famine. Among other things, he stated: "My first evidence was gathered from foreign observers. Since Mr. Duranty introduces consuls into the discussion, a thing I am loath to do, for they are official representatives of their countries and should not be quoted, may I say that I discussed the famine situation with between twenty and thirty consuls and diplomatic representatives of various nations and that their evidence supported my point of view. But they are not allowed to express their views in the press, and therefore remain silent." [italics added]

As the 1933 harvest was gathered, the famine areas were gradually opened to foreign correspondents and "the first to be given permission to travel into the forbidden zones were the technically 'friendly' reporters, whose dispatches might be counted upon to take the sting out of anything subsequent travellers might report. Duranty, for instance, was given a two- week advantage over most of us". Soviet faith in Duranty paid off, for in his articles he apologized on behalf of Moscow by writing that although "conditions had been bad in many sections prior to the harvest and that most of the pessimistic reports emanated from quarters that are naturally the most hostile to the Soviet Union , the present crop is so abundant that whatever the shortcomings, the national food supply is fully assured for the coming year".

Yet, there seems to have been "another" Duranty, who in private would give "his fresh impressions [of the famine] in brutally frank terms", and "his estimate of the dead from the famine was the most startling yet heard from anyone". Duranty estimated that the mortality rate in Ukraine and the North Caucasus had more than trebled. "But Walter, you don't mean that literally?" Mrs. O'Hare McCormick (roving correspondent for the New York Times) exclaimed. "Hell, I don't... I am being conservative", he replied.

Before the ban to travel into famine-stricken Ukraine and the North Caucasus was somethat eased, steps were taken to conceal the physical vestiges of famine. This meant getting the starving out of the cities, factories and railroads. During the first stages of the famine, a great number of already weakened peasants flocked to the cities in the hope of finding food, and died there massively. Since the presence of dead and dying people on the streets was embarrassing to the regime, they were exiled from the urban districts, turned back to their villages, or deported to labour camps.

To enforce these measures, a passport system was introduced in December 1932 for residents of cities, which meant that the peasants and city dwellers were not permitted to leave their home areas. Nobody could move or stay 24 hours away from home without a visa from the GPU militia, and this incriminating document indicated the social origin of the bearer, his family attachments, his occupation and movements. During the three months that "passportization" was being introduced, Stalin vetoed marriages, divorces, adoptions, and changes of address in order to render fraud impossible.

Thus, an extensive "clean-up" campaign in the famine areas accessible to foreigners was put into effect. As F. Beal reported: "The Soviet authorities would round up the starving people in the streets, collect them in great herds, and turn them over to the GPU. It was a weekly occurrence. Sometimes a raid would be improvised a few hours before the arrival of a foreign delegation". Small wonder, then, that visitors like Prime Minister Herriot saw only what he was shown without knowing what was going on but a few miles away.

There were, however, other groups in the countryside who could not be misled. These were the foreigners working in foreign firms. One source of famine information was, for instance, the Drusag Agricultural Concession in the North Caucasus. It was subsequently closed in August 1933.

There is no need to stress that Soviet citizens - a potential source of information - were not allowed to leave the USSR freely. And those who managed to leave, one way or another, had to keep in mind their relatives left behind.

Finally, to make the concealment complete, Moscow refused to publish any vital statistics for the famine-stricken republics during this period, and physicians were forbidden to enter "hunger" in the records of illness and death. They were ordered to give "BBO"as the cause of death (absence of white corpuscles). Sometimes it was recorded as "child-like" or "old age" weakness, "paralysis of the heart", and "diarrhea" (all symptoms, however, of death by starvation). This further complicated matters as to the breakdown in establishing the cause of death. Thus, the most rigorous censorship Soviet Russia had ever seen was a success, for it had concealed the catastrophe until its very end, bringing confusion, doubt and contradiction into the whole subject. "The British and American literature of apologetics, which in later years 'blamed' the peasants for the famine (as Duranty did in 1932 in his article 'Food Shortages Laid to Peasants', New York Times, Nov. 26, 1932, p. 9) that killed millions of them, was either cynical or stupid".

Nevertheless, "years after the event, the question of whether there had been a famine at all was still being disputed in the outside world". [italics added] There should not be any doubt that Moscow's effective killing of famine news was one of the missions most successfully accomplished by the Soviet Press Department and its fifth columns abroad.

Thirty years after the famine, a younger generation of Ukrainian writers in the Soviet Union could not remain indifferent and began to probe the past. Thus, on October 16, 1962, the brilliant young poet Wasyl Symonenko* noted in his diary: "Nothing could be more horrible than unlimited power in the hands of a limited man. The chairman of the collective farm in Yaremenko's village was screaming in helplessness and fury during the meeting: I'll arrange another 1933 for you! Naturally, nobody even thought about taking this scoundrel out by the scruff of his neck. And yet this fool with one idiotic phrase could destroy the achievements made by dozens of sensible people. If our leaders had more brains than they really do, such loudmouths would be admiring the sky from behind iron bars". [Italics added].

As already noted, two months later, in December 1962, Stadniuk's courageous novel People Are Not Angels was published in the USSR. The work deals not only with Ukrainian village life during the collectivization period, but makes no secret of the famine and of its causes. In fact, its impact on life is portrayed quite frankly: "Hunger is a threatening, dark word which chills the heart. He who has not experienced hunger cannot imagine what human suffering it causes. There is nothing more terrible for a man, the head of his family, than the consciousness of his complete helplessness before the sad, imploring eyes of his wife, who does not know how to feed her children. There is nothing more terrible for a mother than the sight of her emaciated, dull, hungry children who have forgotten how to laugh. If it were for a week or a month , but no, for many months in the majority of Kokhanovka households there had been nothing to put on the table. The grain bins were swept out, the barns were emptied, there roas not a hen left in the yards. Even the beetroot seed had been eaten. All were awaiting the spring as not one of them had waited for anything before. They waited for the frost to loosen the ground so that it might be possible to dig up the gardens, where in the autumn they had gathered the potatoes. Perhaps a potato had been left in the ground. Frozen during the winter, it would still retain in its hardened skin just a fragment of starch. They waited for the bark to quicken on the lime trees and for the buds to swell. Young nettles, goosefoot, sorrel, maize would spring up. They hoped that nature would come to man's aid with something. But the spring suddenly withdrew. It was the men who died first from hunger, then the children, then the women. But before departing from life, people often lost their ability to reason and ceased to be people". [italics added]

In other sections of the novel Stadniuk writes: "Misfortune is growing in the family of your people. Your ruler has seen the ray of the sun, and imagines that the sun lives already in his soul. When there is a false sun, there is false warmth. The mania of infallibility is warming the heart of your ruler, fed by the flattery of some and the silence of others, imposed by the fear of death. Incapable of comprehending the complexity of the people, gone astray, inflexible as death, he is sowing grief in your land. He had run away in order to find out the truth. He believed that his wrathful voice would reach Moscow, would come to the ears of Stalin. He must find out about the terrible disregard of law and the arbitrary acts which are being committed". The above-quoted passages from Symonenko and Stadniuk make unmistakable reference to the immediate causes of the famine. Stadniuk's book is a powerful moral condemnation of a political system that made the famine possible. When Maxim Litvinov, RSFSR Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs, and later Soviet Foreign Minister during the famine, met with the American Relief Administration on August 20,1921, he could not help but reveal the evil intentions of a regime that would murder millions a little more than a decade later.

In this paper, we have barely scratched the surface of what was involved in the tragedy. Thousands of printed pages of references, comments, reports, articles, accounts, eyewitness testimonies, documents, photographs, etc. lie in dusty archives throughout the world. There are thousands of people who lived through the ordeal and are ready to recount their experiences to those who will listen.

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*This paper was written well before the collapse of the Soviet Union, with minor revisions recently introduced by the author.