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Paper on the Topic:
The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1932-1933: The largest ethno-national catastrophe of the 20th Centuery
Yuriy Murza
Student in the Humanities Faculty (History)
National University of the Ostroh Academy
Ostroh, Ukraine - 2004
CONTENTS
Foreword
Section 1. FORCED COLLECTIVIZATION AND REQUISITION: The basis for the Famine
Section II. 1931—THE START OF THE GREAT FAMINE
Section III. 1932-1933: GRAIN REQUISITION AND FAMINE
Afterword
List of Abbreviations
Bibliography
FOREWORD
A little over 70 years and three generations have passed. The first one remembers everything, the second saw nothing but heard, the third is
looking for the truth in documents marked “Top secret.” We learned about the famine only some 15–20 years ago; the entire Western world knew
about it but kept official silence.
There are few eye-witnesses alive today and it would be hard to find any of those who carried it out. And although this crime—holocaust and
genocide—is not that far in the past, it seems that everyone is trying very hard to make it eternally distant. Yet an answer is needed, first of all for
the sake of our own self-worth, which after 70 years of building “paradise” seemed worthy only of a place in hell.
The West puts enough money into studying its past so that the truth might be revealed. Until recently, possibly even today, we have done
everything to the contrary. Why now? Because the question stands whether anyone can name a single event that happened in the last decade
that clearly spelled out the tragedies of 1917–1921, 1932–1933, 1938, or any other years. The answer is no! That’s the way we deal with our
past. Do we have a right to demand an apology for the horror that was inflicted upon us if we ourselves cannot get it suitably recognized on an
official level?
At this point in time, very many articles have appeared that describe the terrible thirties, drawing particular attention to 1932–1933. The first
people to take on this task were generally people who personally survived or witnessed the terrible state of the Ukrainian countryside at the
beginning of the 1930s and were able to leave their homeland, not always of their own will, and to carry the truth to the rest of the world about the
real nature of socialism in the USSR.
Once Ukraine gained independence, the issue of the Holodomor became particularly pertinent. After all, we were now able to speak and write
the truth about those black and bitter pages of our history. It makes sense, then, to look at the work that has been done on this topic. Our analysis
will be limited to a few publications, as this essay’s goal is not to examine a broad range of sources and literature.
A collection of papers called Collectivization and Famine in Ukraine (1929–1933) illuminates the process that took place in the Ukrainian
countryside when force was used to establish total collectivization and resulted in the great famine of 1932–1933.
The book Who benefited from the Holodomor? presents articles from well-known Ukrainian politicians and academics about the conditions for
famines [sic] to happen in Ukraine. With the help of a wealth of factual materials, the circumstances and reasons are examined and those guilty
of these tragic events and their aftermath are named. Finally, what saved Ukrainians from utter destruction is emphasized.
In S.V. Kulchytskiy’s pamphlet, 1933: The tragedy of famine, the first Five-Year socio-economic Plan carried out by Stalin is described, key
elements of which were the total collectivization of farmsteads and the gradual decline of farm production under the influence of the production
schedules imposed on collective farms or kolhosps. The criminal work of the Emergency Grain Requisition Commission run by Molotov, which
operated in Ukraine from November 1932 to February 1933, is separately examined and an effort is made to assess the extent of the famine and
the demographic losses it engendered.
Another work is M. Lukhin’s Subjugated by Hunger, which brings to the reader’s attention sources on the history of the Holodomor of 1932–1933
available outside Ukraine. The basis for this publication are the materials gathered by the US Congressional Commission and the International
Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine in 1932–1933, as well as the archives of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (New York).
Ukraine’s Golgotha, written by D. Solovey, is a true description of the terror and genocide against the Ukrainian nation after the failure of its
liberation efforts in 1917–1920. This work is unique in the breadth of materials it encompasses and at the same time its scrupulous attention to
detail, depth of analysis of historical events, along with the lucidity of its arguments and the clarity of its conclusions.
Ukrainian Holocaust is a collection of eye-witness accounts of those who survived one of the most terrible tragedies in human history, the
genocidal famine of 1932–1933 that was intended to destroy the Ukrainian nation. These testimonies, collected for over a decade, make it
possible to see the effect of the terrifying mechanism used to destroy Ukrainian farmers and to bring to light those pages of Ukraine’s history
that had been hidden until now.
The goal of this paper is to show who were the ideologues and organizers of the 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine and to present the main
preconditions.
Achieving this goal involves a number of tasks: tracing the genesis of the Holodomor, identifying those who were responsible for the events of
1932–1933, and reflecting the attitude of contemporaries to those tragic years.
The chronology of this essay covers the pre-famine period and 1932–1933 directly.
This work is based on a clear set of resources. These are primarily published materials that have been preserved in the Central State Archives
of Ukraine’s higher bodies of government and administration, the Central State Archives of Community Associations in Ukraine, and memoirs.
For a long time, the main source of information on events connected to the Holodomor were the memoirs of contemporaries. As with many
memoirs, however, these typically lacked factual confirmation, which prevented them from functioning as documentaries. They tended to be
subjective accounts lacking in detail; sometimes they included exaggerations or second-hand information, making them less than objective. But
these kinds of shortcomings do not prevent published memoirs from being a valuable resource for historians.
By summarizing these materials and using them with a critical eye, the author believes he has objectively presented the topic.
The structure of this essay includes a foreword, three sections, a conclusion, a list of abbreviations, and a bibliography of sources and literature.
SECTION 1. FORCED COLLECTIVIZATION AND REQUISITION: THE BASIS FOR THE FAMINE
The countryside seems dead. When evening comes,
Not one singing voice can be heard anywhere,
Only news, grave and terrible news:
Hunger marches implacably through the villages.
O. Odnomarenko, “1932–33”
The Famine of 1932–1933, that enormous catastrophe for the Ukrainian people inspired by the top leadership of the USSR, remains, even after
more than half a century, an absolutely taboo page in soviet history. The silence surrounding the Famine and the cover-up of any and all
information about it was part of the official policy of the Communist Party and this had a negative impact on the documentation of events as well—
the main source of information.
The Holodomor has no equivalent in the history of other peoples in Europe. In many of its aspects, it merits the name being called the Ukrainian
Holocaust: it was on a much larger scale than the two other 20th century European holocausts, the Jewish and the Armenian ones, although the
means used to implement it were significantly different.
The impact of this particular Holocaust is distinctive not only for the number of Ukrainian victims but also for the catastrophic consequences for
the ethnic stability of the national organism over subsequent decades, up until this day. As a tragedy whose scale is impossible to conceive, the
Holocaust traumatized an entire people, leaving on its body deep social, psychological and democratic scars that it carries to this day.
Perhaps the most important aspect of this tragic famine is that it was completely preventable…
As to the period in the run-up to the Holodomor of 1932–1933, it is described in a number of documents that have already been made public.
How did this happen?
Even a superficial review of specific documents provides evidence that market relations between the city and the countryside, that is, the
procurement of grain on the market that was instituted by the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921, was seen as a mistake by Party leaders. [4, p.
256] Market relations made it difficult for the state to rob its farmers even when overly low prices were set for the grain compared to prices for
industrial goods. The Bolshevik state needed bread to be completely free.
At the beginning of 1928, after the 15th Congress of the All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik) that ran December 2–19, 1927, the Bolsheviks
amended their bow to the right and threw themselves into industrialization. In January 1928, the soviet Council of People’s Commissars (CPC)
passed a resolution to collect all payments from rural areas in advance. This was the start of force being used against the country’s farm sector.
On order from Moscow in July 1929, the year of the “great breakthrough,” the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (AUCEC) and the CPC
issued a resolution “On expanding the power of local councils to facilitate the enforcement of national objectives and plans.” [3, p. 624] This
resolution required all levels of government to organize the completion of the grain production plan by the wealthier farmer-peasants and there
was no discussion of procurement. A class war was instigated: poorer peasants tattled on the wealthier. Penal government agencies were set
up.
All this is testified by the numberless reports from organizational committees on the progress of grain requisitions, such as “The Report of the
Lubny Organizational Committee of the AUCEC on the forced requisitioning of leftover grain” of January 27, 1929. To quote the document directly:
“The main form of influencing kurkul [kulak in Russian] farmsteads during the grain production campaign of 1927–1928 was through the courts.
A total of 116 persons were sentenced to prison under Art. 127 of the Communist Constitution: 50 wealthy kulak-types (43%), 32 merchants
(27.4%), 31 small farmers (27%), and 3 farmhands (2.6%)… Along with attacks on the kurkul through the court system, there was an organized
campaign among the poor, an intensification of class warfare through meetings with village activists, meetings with farmhands and small
farmers… the direct participation [of farmhands] in grain requisitioning as counteragents, the exposure of kurkuls who held on to their grain in
order to speculate on it, and so on.” [18, p. 44]
This document makes it clear that even using punitive methods failed to take all the grain away from free farmers. This is when the CP
leadership decided to go for total collectivization.
The first phase of the total annihilation of peasantry as the ethnic foundation of the Ukrainian people began in the “year of the great
breakthrough,” 1929–1930. This was when “dekurkulization” first became official, as a result of which 1.3 million individuals were mainly
deported from Ukraine but also destroyed. [25, p. 14] In November 1929, the plenum of the CCCP (b) [Central Committee of the Communist
Party] passed an even stricter resolution “On agriculture and work in the countryside,” where it was required that Ukraine institute collective
farms [kolhosps] in the shortest possible time. V. Molotov, L. Kaganovich and Kaganovich’s representative in Ukraine, General Secretary of the
Communist Party (b) of Ukraine Stanislav Kosior insisted that total collectivization be achieved within a single year.
To consolidate these demands, the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik) [CCACP(b)] adopted a resolution on
January 5, 1930, “On the pace of collectivization and the means of state support for building collective farms.” The Bolsheviks were keen to
complete collectivization in Fall 1931 or Spring 1932. But in a February 24, 1930 instruction addressed to all Party members, Kosior demanded
that “the collectivization of Ukraine be completed in 1930.” The main aims of setting up kolhosps were:
- virtually free access to farm products;
- total control over farmers;
- carrying out a propaganda campaign. [26, p. 175]
Officially voluntary, collectivization was actually forced and led to a situation in Ukraine that bordered on civil war: brother against brother,
farmhands pointing fingers at small farmers and kurkuls, and the middle group tattling on the kurkul. The Party had the right to determine
allowable assets for a villager at its own whim. [5, p. 123]
With the campaign against “kurkuls” and “small farmers,” the most productive and most organized groups of villagers were deliberately being
destroyed. If a farmhand refused to join a kolhosp, he was labeled a “kurkul sympathizer” and found himself where the kurkuls were. [6, p. 264]
Established in this way, the kolhosps became a state organization. In contradiction to the status of a kolhosp, county Party organizations
appointed the heads of these collective farms, effectively completely usurping village governments. Village or hamlet councils became mere
marionettes. The kolhosps were now run by people who had little or no connection to agriculture and who were quite unable to organize
production properly. With Party cliques applying force and the state brutally exploiting farmers—now more like serfs than ever before—, who were
unable to use the fruits of their own labors, the system of collective farms collapsed. [15, p. 36]
Recognizing the threat to their very existence, kolhosp workers began leaving collective farms in droves. One popular ditty among young people
in those days was:
Rise, Lenin, see how the komnezam [kolhosp] is working
Krupska’s playing harmonica, Stalin’s dancing a sharp hopak
Ukraine now drinks a hundred grams per ration
In one of the typical 1,500 complaints that came to receiving manager of the AUCEC, H. I. Petrovskiy in the single month of August 1932,
especially from kolhosp workers in the village of Semerynka, Trostianets county in Kharkiv oblast, the general reason why people were leaving
the collective “paradise” were: “When we joined the kolhosp, our land was made common, all our property, our seeding materials, and we
began to work it all ourselves. Now the kolhosp is not paying us, it’s not giving us our day pay, and it’s not giving us out our land plots. Kolhosp
workers have nothing to wear and nothing to eat.” [12, p. 235]
The trusting kolhosp workers had little idea that every protest, even such passive ones, were carefully being surveilled by the Ukrainian SSR
State Department of Politics [GPU] watchdogs and dealt with the situation very harshly. The deputy head of the Ukrainian SSR GPU, K. Carlson,
wrote the following in an informational note to the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Ukraine on July 13, 1932: “Additional reports coming in
from local GPU offices signal that requests from kolhosp workers to leave their collective farms continue to grow… The passivity of these
organizations (local and county governments) is particularly striking in terms of taking available measures to prevent people from leaving the
kolhosps.” [12, p. 205–207] Moscow’s reaction to this bad news was instantaneous.
On July 25, 1932, Kaganovich and Molotov, through OGPU representative Nauman, sent a telegram to the CCCP(b) of Ukraine and the Ukrainian
Council of People’s Commissars with the immediate demand: “…to get that breakthrough in grain production and to obligatorily carry out the
plan for July. Telegraph about measures adopted.” [12, p. 222]
In order to prove whether the Famine was man-made or the result of a failed harvest, some convincing facts can be called on that put to rest
various rumors of poor weather conditions in 1932, whether there was a poor harvest, and what the previous year’s harvest had been.
For instance, in 1917, the year of the revolution and a year in which many normal processes and cycles were understandably disrupted, the
gross harvest of grain in Ukraine was 1,108 million puds [1 pud = 16.36 kg] or 28.5% of the overall harvest in the Russian empire. The surplus,
that is, the grain that was over and above domestic needs, was 470 million puds.
According to the Brest Peace Accord signed between the Ukrainian National Republic and the Alliance on January 27, 1918, the Central Council
had committed itself to deliver Germany and Austria-Hungary 60 million puds of grain. Unsurprisingly, these millions were also referred to as
“surplus” in all official documents and there were no doubts in the minds of experts that they existed. Yet it’s worth noting that throughout the
second half of 1917, grain was being supplied both to Russia and, more importantly, to its many millions of soldiers on the front. During the
period from December 1917 to April 1918, when the soviets first temporarily dominated Ukraine, at least a quarter—and possibly even closer to
a third—of the amount of grain promised to the Germans was being shipped out of the country.
Yet this did not lead to famine in 1918. What’s more, given that there was a civil war going on, Austro-German occupation and endless uprisings
in the countryside against the occupiers and hetmanate, the harvest was an impressive 970 million puds. Neither the Germans nor the
Austrians had expected anything like this when, under the pretext that the country had not carried out its commitments under the Brest treaty, they
anticipated forcing Ukraine to sign new documents on shipping 35% of the 1918 crop out of the Ukrainian State. Still, 35% was actually 344
million puds looked so openly rapacious and astronomical to all that, for “diplomatic” reasons, official documents began to use “more
acceptable” terms—no less than 75 million puds. [7]
The Germans, of course, were unable, for well-known reasons, “take theirs.” Still, for Ukraine, 1919, with its soviet procurements and White
Guard requisitions, likely proved no less of a challenge than the previous year. And still there was no famine. Moreover, at the 4th Congress of
the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine in March 1920, it was officially stated that surplus grain from the previous harvest in Ukraine was nearly 600
million puds. [8] Not a single year after the revolution, not even 1921–1922 produced such a poor crop that the country was unable to supply its
population. Yet, in 1932–1933, when there were no wars going on, famine scourged the country like a real war, a silent war…
SECTION II. 1931—THE START OF THE GREAT FAMINE
Those who have studied the famine of the 1930s in Ukraine generally label it chronologically as “The Famine of 1932–1933.” This is an
approximation. There are both documents and testimony from eye-witnesses that the famine actually began in 1931.
One sample of such a testimony, provided by D.Z. Kalenyk of Uman county in Cherkasy oblast: “Because of this total theft (the requisition of
grain, vegetables, extra foodstuffs), people began to starve in Fall 1931 in the countryside, and by Winter 1932 this had grown into a terrible
famine. People looked like skeletons, their skin stretched tight, or they swelled up like beehives. The massive die-off began. 1933 was even
more terrible. By then, famine had hit every family. There were cases of people eating both the living and the dead. Those who could still move
around drifted like living ghosts around yards and gathering the terrible crop of corpses. They stacked them in mass graves and barely covered
them in soil…Sometimes, along with the dead, they would toss those whose hearts were still beating.” [27, p. 31]
The basis for a famine was established by the state over January–November 1930, when it took in the largest procurement of grain (400 puds)
from the kolhosps and family farms. The result of barbaric production plans in 1930 and mismanagement, already in the first half of 1931,
collective farms and private homesteads found themselves unable to cover their own needs until the new crop. There was a grain shortage. [20,
p. 240] People began to eat chaff, weeds, acorns and other plants; many grew seriously ill and the death toll began to rise. Meanwhile, “Papa”
Stalin expressed his satisfaction with the grain plans at the 16th Congress of the Communist Party in 1930, stating, “We are already resolving
the problem of grain generally with success,” to the accompaniment of tumultuous applause from his satanic henchmen.
The consequences of these “successes” were already being felt at the beginning of 1931 in the cries for help from hungry children, as can be
seen in the following:
- a letter from residents of a children’s home to the head of the AUCEC, H. Petrovskiy, dated March 10, 1931: “The kids are barely going to
school or their workshops… and many kids are leaving because of famine…;” [18, p. 298]
- a telegram from the Kamiansky County Executive Council in Dnipropetrovsk oblast to the National Education Commissariat about the lack
of food supplies in a children’s colony, dated March 21, 19931: “In Juvenile Colony 220, children are being removed from the centralized
supply of bread, decentralized supplies are forbidden, there are no local resources. Children are being left without bread…;” [18, p. 307]
- a letter from the director of the Sofia Juvenile Colony in Zaporizhzhia to the All-Ukrainian Cooperative Union about the threat of famine, dated
March 29, 1931 and many other documents (unfortunately, it is impossible to present all of them in this short paper).
But this is enough to question for a moment: Who is this? “Kurkuls,” “small farmers”? Or maybe “kurkul sympathizers”? No! These are not part
of the class war. These cries were from helpless innocents, Ukrainian children condemned to the inevitable hungry death by Stalin and
Kaganovich.
Children were dying, and with them the Ukrainian gene pool. Is any more evidence needed that there was a Ukrainian genocide? According to
Art. 2 of the UN Convention of December 9, 1948, “On preventing the crime of genocide and punishment for it,” genocide is defined as “actions
carried out with the intention of completely or partly destroying any national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.” Based on this Article, the
Ukrainian genocide is distinguished by two of the five forms listed: “(c) intentionally creating for any particular group such living conditions as are
calculated to fully or partly destroy it; (d) actions calculated to prevent procreation in the environment of such a group.”
Let the lawyers think about this one. We will continue to expose the mechanisms underlying the Holodomor as regards 1931 on a documented
basis.
Documents from this year radiate with finely phrased headings:
- “Consolidated report by Ukrainian SSR National Land Commissariat information groups about difficult conditions for maintaining livestock
and losses in the countryside,” dated January 25, 1931.
- “Consolidated report by the Ukrainian SSR National Land Commissariat regarding the collective farm movement in Ukraine and rural
resistance to collectivization” dated March 1, 1931;
- “From reports by Ukrainian SSR National Land Commissariat information groups on the progress of forced collectivization prior to the
spring sowing campaign,” dated 14 April 1931. These reported that the priest of the village of Rovenky had warned local farmers: “The time
has come when merciless anti-Christs are determined to bleed our hard-working people dry and push them to hell. You are being driven to
the kolhosps so that you can be the last. As a reward for this, the devil has already prepared hell. Live as your fathers lived before you…”;
- “Notice from cities to the Ukrainian SSR National Education Commissariat about the half-starved state of (rural) teachers” dated April 1931.
Documentation confirms that the forced nature of the collectivization in 1931 involved specially organized “towing brigades” of poor and small
farmers and criminal elements who were given unlimited powers and used “group and individual methods to work over farmers and
farmwomen according to drawn-up lists.” (“Consolidated information from Ukrainian Kolhosp Center on the work of towing brigades in getting
farmers to join kolhosps” dated April 16, 1931).
So much human anguish and pain are preserved in the archival materials those last hungry months of 1931! In one of the complaints filed
December 26, 1931, dying farmworkers from the “Free October” kolhosp in the village of Erdelivka in Odesa oblast beg (in the language of the
original) “the Central Executive Government and the All-Soviet Communist Party (b)” to pay attention to: “an entire village dying of hunger that is
turning to You for help. Having worked all summer on the kolhosp and giving all our seed to the fund as required by the county committee, which
now does not believe that our people have started to bloat from hunger and to eat horses that are dying for lack of food…” Unable to wait for an
answer from the Bolsheviks in Moscow, the villagers slowly died off.
Civil courage was also demonstrated by two students at the Air Force Academy in Moscow, O. Pakhomenko and Ya. Korkin, who were convinced
after visiting Ukraine of the evil deeds of the government towards villagers in Starobilshchyna and wrote an angry letter to “the All-Ukrainian
senior statesman” H. Petrovskiy on July 7, 1931. The authors of the letter pointed out to the “happenings,” “terrorizing,” and to the fact that
“managers of kolhosps are getting drunk on a regular basis,” “the reluctance of farmhands and small farmers to join kolhosps,” “demands of
fines from people and dekurkulization…in the most crude fashion possible…, sometimes even beatings… All those being dekurkulized are
driven out to ravines, so-called ‘gullies,’ …people condemned to famine…” What the end result was of this correspondence with brave students
at the Academy with Mr. Petrovskiy can only be imagined…
The massive attack of the “towing brigades” on the countryside made it possible for the state to extract 380mn puds of grain from the collective
farms and private homesteads in 1931. The harvest that year was much smaller than in 1930, yet losses were even greater because of the
mismanagement of the kolhosps and the unwillingness of collective farmworkers to work for nothing. By the end of 1931, the lack of food
supplies among villagers had led to famine.
SECTION III. 1932-1933: GRAIN REQUISITION AND FAMINE
At the beginning of 1932, the new and final phase of grain requisition from the 1931 crop began. The CCCP(b)U declared January 1932 a
“breakthrough.” The main class enemy in the countryside continued to be that same kurkul and the main one to blame for the failure of grain
requisition. Despite the fact that kurkuls as a class had already been destroyed, now all villagers suddenly became “kurkuls.” This meant that, in
Leninese, of course, “Requisitioning grain from kurkuls is not theft.” The grain requisitioning brigades worked full-force, like a team of torturers
straight out of the Middle Ages. Facts that confirm this are ample. Here is one.
The Haisynskiy District Prosecutor in Vinnytsia oblast, a man by the name of Horney, wrote a letter to the All-Ukrainian Central Executive
Committee January 22, 1932, in which he handed over evidence from an investigation “about lawlessness during grain requisition in the village
of Bdjil’ne, Teplytskiy County, in Vinnystia Oblast:” “Regardless of their social origins, villagers were called out to the brigades, brutally treated,
insulted in various ways and physically abused. For instance, Citizen Hyl’ko Krasnoperniy, age 67, a small farmer, tells how he was called out to
the brigade and when he appeared, they began to mistreat him, … and then began to singe his beard with matches. …But the brigade was
protected by those carrying out orders…
“Citizen Oleksandra Hubal’, a farmhand, testifies that despite the fact that she had fulfilled everything that was required of her in terms of grain
requisition, a brigade showed up at her house in the person of Verkhmiller and Tkachuk, who took every bit of grain away from her. When she
began to demand that they return it, they began to swear at her, threatened to trash her house, and mistreated her as well, pulling up her skirts in
front of her children. And one time the called her out to the brigade office and threatened to pour kerosene over her and set her on fire,… she was
pregnant and they were pushing her in the chest…”
In addition, Prosecutor Horney writes in this letter that grain requisition was being carried out in Telytskiy County by a brigade of 400 (The Flying
Squadron), run by the County Party Committee’s deputy (CPC). “The village was completely militarized. Brigade members in pairs were
garrisoned with the farmers who had not completed their grain requisitions. And these farmers were required to feed and house the brigade
members until such time as they completed their quota.” [18, p. 398] At the end of the letter, Prosecutor Horney promised, “After the conclusion of
the investigation, a copy of the conclusions of guilt will be sent to you,” meaning the AUCEC. The Prosecutor was not defending the interests of
the robber state, but of his condemned countrymen…
This one fact alone shows precisely how the clearly haphazard, Moscow-organized 356 million pud grain requisition plan was being carried out
in Ukraine in 1932. This 1932 grain campaign turned into a real act of terrorism against farmers, carried out by “flying squadrons” under the
command of party committees and commissions that were guided by the Stalinist slogan: “Peasants can only be pacified if you break their
backs.” Even participants in the building of the “bright future,” the komsomols, looked in horror at the policies being carried out by Moscow.
For instance, a student komsomol called H. Tkachenko wrote a letter to Stanislav Kosior in which he described the terrible scene of the
Holodomor at the beginning of Summer 1932 in Kyiv oblast: “Tens and hundreds of instances when kolhosp workers go out into the fields and
simply disappear, and after a few days they are found rotting and their bodies are taken, absolutely without any pity, as though this were
completely normal, and tossed into a hole and that’s it. And the next day, those who buried them are also found dead. They’re dying of hunger.”
He put a question to the CCCP(b)U Secretary-General and then answered it himself: “Now, honorable Stanislav Vikentiyovych, is this the path to
socialism? This is the path to decay and death. How can we possibly build socialism like this?” [9]
One unusual letter came from workers in Belarus to the CCCP(b)U. It is dated July 15, 1932. They wrote: “Since when did Belarus ever feed
Ukraine? There have been worse years [author’s emphasis], but Ukraine fed Belarus, but now it’s the other way around. Belarus is not against
helping Ukrainian kolhosp workers and hardworking villagers in an organized manner, but not the way it’s being done now, when you can’t walk
by or drive, on the railways or on the road without running into Ukrainians. Everywhere, numberless hungry, shabby Ukrainians are milling
around the streets in Belarusian towns.” [10] It is painful to read these sentences… The people who were feeding Europe were themselves
dying of hunger!
In July 1932, the III Congress of the CP(b)U took place in Kharkiv, with the participation of members of the Central Committee of the All-Soviet
Communist Party (Bolshevik) Politburo, Lazar Kaganovich and Viacheslav Molotov, and they elected Josef Stalin their honorary head.
Under the watchful eye of the Moscow bosses, CCCP(b)U Secretary-General Kosior reported the results of the Spring 1932 sowing campaign
and the grain requisition and harvesting campaigns, noting that 50% of the harvest had been lost and the territory sown had shrunk by 2 million
hectares. AUCEC Chair Petrovskiy and others noted “problems with food supplies,” while Molotov noted that “quite a few counties ran into a
difficult situation with food because of mistakes and lapses during production.” Kaganovich called on everybody to “increase the profitability of
kolhosps… and kolhosp workers.” In a charnel house atmosphere, with Kaganovich and Molotov putting on pressure, the fateful Congress failed
to provide a real assessment of the situation in Ukraine and the word “famine” never crossed anyone’s lips. Instead, a cabalistic grain
requisition plan of 356mn puds was approved for Ukraine in 1932.
The throat of the peasant found itself ever more gripped by the “skeletal hand of hunger.”
On July 25, 1932, the first news of cannibalism in Ukraine reached the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine. It is
naïve to imagine that Kaganovich and Molotov had no idea what was going on in Ukraine, having been at the III Party Congress. Of course they
knew! On April 28, 1932, Ukrainian Secretary General Kosior had sent a complete report of the letters sent to the Central Committee, to Stalin
personally, and to the Ukrainian Central Committee regarding grain requisitions and famine in Ukraine. In an April 26 letter, Kosior informed
Stalin thus: “We have some individual cases and even the occasional village that are experiencing famine, but this is only the result of local
neglect and exaggeration. Grain shortage and famine are a topic that the kurkul and his agents are turning into a major issue.” [13, p. 55]
Driven to despair, kolhosp workers in Fastov wrote a letter to Stain in April 1932: “Our hardworking kolhosp workers have not even a scrap of
bread. There are even some who, with nothing to eat, are starting to bloat from hunger. The kolhosp horses are dying and people are dividing
them up and eating them, which is leading to widespread disease. We are asking why bread is cheap and there’s as much as you want in
Voronezh, Annovka, Moscow, Tiflis [Tbilisi. Ed], and Crimea, while in Ukraine there is none.” [12, p. 152]
This was written at a time when state elevators were flooded with grain, when it was swiftly being transported to distilleries for alcohol and vodka
production to Moscow, Ivano-Voznesensk and other Russian cities and for export to Western Europe. In one year alone, exports of grain reached
18 million centners.
By the time Summer 1932 came around and the half-starved kolhosp workers began to sneak out into the fields at night in the hopes of cutting
themselves some unripe sheaves or during milling to hide a fistful of grain in their waistbands or in their pockets, the organizers of the famine
from the Central Executive Committee and the County Party Committee passed a resolution on August 7, 1932, “On guarding the property of
state companies, kolhosps and cooperators and for increasing communal (socialist) ownership,” known popularly as the “law of five sheaves.”
According to this Resolution, so-called theft of state property was punishable by a prison term of no less than 10 years with confiscation of all
property or by firing squad. Using this resolution, all party state structures went into action, especially the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR, headed by
S. Redens and his deputy, K. Karlson. The result of their work was swift in coming: 55,000 individuals were sentenced, including 2,100 to the
firing squad. Many country dwellers and their children were killed by overseers on the spot for having “stolen” sheaves of wheat.
In order to get every last bit of grain from villagers and to prevent them from buying it at the kolhosps, the Politburo of the CCCP(b)U issued a
resolution on August 9, 1932, “On measures to combat speculation in grain,” according to which “…kolhosps have permission to trade in grain
only after January 15, 1933, after the full requisition of grain for the Union. …We must strike a blow against re-sellers and speculators, the
wealthy kurkul elite and small farmers…, we must act cleverly, forcefully, using repressive and administrative measures through the courts…
With this decision, the GPU and the People’s Commissariat of Justice should be given orders in their various spheres.” [12, p. 222]
Thus, the complete confiscation of grain from the Ukrainian countryside was to be completed by January 15, 1933.
To ensure the carrying out of this resolution, in October 1932, Moscow sent a commission to Ukraine, led by V. Molotov and including
Kalmanovich, Sarkis, Markevich and Krentsel, while the first deputy of the USSR GPU, I. Akulov, was appointed member of the Politburo and
Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U, while the Secretary of the Party’s Central Volga Province Committee, Mendel Khatayevich, was
appointed to the Politburo and made Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U. Ongoing control of their activities was charged to
Kaganovich.
The Molotov Commission operated in Ukraine until the end of January, 1933, to the conclusive victory of operation “Holodomor.” After this,
Molotov, like Pilate, washed his hands… The commission left no documentary traces of its presence in Ukraine. All the orders and resolutions
issued by the Commission were done verbally. Any formal documents were signed by the minions of the Moscow bosses in Ukraine—Kosior,
Chubar and other managers of the Party-State’s repressive apparatus under the strict oversight of the commission and on condition that the
content of such documents would reflect the “Party’s general line.” Every one of these documents was another mortal blow on the swollen-
bellied, starving Ukrainian villager. Each one harder than that last. The “beauty” of the names of these documents is evident without further
comment. The examples that follow are a small selection:
1. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of October 25, 1932 “On the need to close the gap in Ukraine’s execution of the grain requisition plan,”
demanded: “Celebrate the October [Revolution] Anniversary with a tenfold increase in the pace of grain collection…, organize uninterrupted
Red Cavalcades of grain deliveries, set up teams of the best workers and staff to carry out broad-based organizational work.” [12, p. 239]
2. Telegram of October 27, 1932 of Transcaucasus Provincial Secretary of the All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik), Lavrenti Beria about
speeding up the unloading of grain (23,000 tonnes) from Ukraine to supply the province: “We’ve already sent people (to Ukraine) to speed
up collection… ” [2, p. 413]
3. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 30 October 1932 “On measures to strengthen grain requisition:” “Mandate oblast committees to report
every five days on the progress of the grain requisition to the Central Committee of the CP(b)U. All members of the Central Committee and
other managers of central and oblast workers…are to completely switch over to working on grain requisition. Confirm the November plan
for grain requisition in the amount of 90 million puds… Carry on the Bolshevik struggle for grain…” [11, p. 197]
4. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 5 November 1932 “On increasing assistance in carrying out grain requisition on the part of judicial
organs:” “Mandate judicial bodies to review cases involving grain requisition without wait, as a rule, in all-day sessions on location and to
hand down the most severe punishments…” [14, p. 63]
5. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 18 November 1932 “On measures to strengthen grain requisition: “…Mobilize 600 Communist workers
from industrial centers by January 10, 1933, as support to rural organizations and to County Party Committees in key grain requisition
counties…” [16, p. 98]
6. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 18 November 1932 “On eliminating counter-revolutionary nests and destroying kurkul groupings:” “1)
Order T. Redens, together with T. Kosior, to put together a special operative plan to wipe out the main kurkul and Petliura counter-
revolutionary nests by November 23… In particular, Chernihiv, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Vinnytsia oblasts are singled out in terms of increasing the
terror against the kurkul. In the last month, some especially bold incidents of kurkul resistance have been reported (Chernihiv,
Dnipropetrovsk, and others)… Increase repression against kurkuls and other counter-revolutionary elements; hit them swiftly and
decisively.” [17, p. 385]
7. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 27 November 1932 “On using punitive measures against kolhosps that are sabotaging grain
requisition:” “Give priority to bringing to justice those born-again, kurkul-loving Party members from among kolhosp management…
Communists who are helping deceive the state and are organizing sabotage of grain requisition should be particularly severely judged.”
[21, p. 101]
8. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 29 November 1932 “On the progress of carrying out the October 30 and November 18, 1932 Politburo
resolutions on grain requisition.” (demand to increase the terror)
9. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 5 December 1932 “On measures to eliminate the sabotage of grain requisition that is being carried out
by kurkul elements.” According to this resolution, punitive court quartets (later trios) are set up consisting of the First Secretary of the
Oblast Committee, the Oblast Control Commission, the Director of the Oblast Department of the GPU, and the Oblast Prosecutor.
Notably, these and subsequent resolutions of the Politburo aimed punitive actions not only against Ukrainian villagers (kurkuls), but also against
that part of the village and county administrations that to some extent were trying to stave off the crazed, murderous Bolshevik attack on the
countryside. In his December 8, 1932 report addressed to the CCACP(b) in Moscow, CCCP(b)U Secretary-General Kosior provides data on the
state of grain requisitions in Ukraine at the end of November and beginning of December 1932. Among others, he notes that “the first serious
blow has been struck against kurkul elements and their acolytes, the organizers of sabotage against grain requisitions.” In November alone and
the first five days of December 1932, 1,690 individuals were arrested in Ukraine for failing to fulfill their grain plans. Among them, 340 were
heads of collective farms, 750 were members of boards, 140 were accountants, 140 were brigadiers, 265 were deputy directors of kolhosps,
and 195 were other kolhosp workers. [12, p. 282]
As we can see, the Politburo resolutions issued by Ukrainian Bolsheviks (under orders from Moscow) kept being issued like a conveyor, each
more demanding than the last. And still, it was obvious that the Party objective in 1932 regarding grain requisition in Ukraine was not being
fulfilled. More importantly, the pace of mortality began to taper off among villagers. It seemed that both the “red broom” and the Molotov
Commission and GPU had swept all the kurkuls, Petliurites, White Guards, saboteurs and speculators clean. The only immune ones remaining
in Ukraine were the Communists: their turn, too, was coming.
The Kremlin bosses were beginning to look beyond mere sabotage by all the various counter-revolutionary elements as the cause of the failure
of agriculture, but also at “betrayal on the part of the Communists,” and also at the fact that “in a slew of counties in Ukraine, Ukrainianization is
mechanically continuing.” In the Northern Caucasus (Kuban), too, there was a problem with “a lightly considered…, unbolshevik
‘Ukrainianization’ of nearly half the counties of Sevkaz [Northern Caucasus] with total lack of control over the Ukrainianization of schools and the
press…” Thus Stalin and Molotov signed yet another resolution of the CCACP(b) and the USSR CPC on December 14, 1932, “On grain
requisition in Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus and western oblasts,” which effectively legalized repression against kolhosp activists, including
communists: “Decisively deracinate all these counter-revolutionary elements using arrests, sentencing to concentration camps for long terms,
not limiting yourselves to the above-named punitive measures…” [22, p. 104]
Until the introduction of this document, Party satraps in Ukraine were directed by Molotov’s recommendations from his report to a meeting of the
All-Soviet Politburo August 3, 1932: “We are clearly confronted with all the signs of a famine… It is too late to back off now. We need to counter
the wave of peasant terrorism with a wave of Red Terror.” [23]
Without regard to the fact that the grain requisition plan in Ukraine had been adjusted to 267 million puds as of November 1, 1932, the
impossibility of carrying it out was obvious. Three years of uninterrupted rape of the countryside through the confiscation of food, the
disorganization of agricultural production, losses during production, and widespread famine in the countryside resulted in 136 million puds on
November 1, 1932 for requisitioning in Ukraine. Ration norms on state ration cards for foodstuffs were cut back for urban workers and state
employees and the flow of grain to export slowed down. In 1932, 107.9 million puds were exported, and in 1933, 105.3 million puds of grain went
abroad. As compensation for the shortfalls of grain, hundreds of masterpieces by famous painters and antiques were seized from Ukrainian
museums and shipped abroad.
As it turned out, the aggression of a Molotov, who chaired the Emergency Grain Requisition Committee in Ukraine, was not enough. With the
purpose of ensuring that the requisition plan and the Dec. 14, 1932 Resolution were fulfilled, Stalin and Molotov signed yet another Resolution
on December 19, 1932, that demanded that “Kaganovich and Postishev immediately leave for Ukraine to help the CCCP(b)U and the Sovnarkom
(Council of People’s Commissars) of Ukraine to take over key oblasts of Ukraine (Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and Kherson) as authorized by the
CCA-SCP(b) and the USSR CPC, sharing the work of Kosior, Chubar and Khatayevich…” [12, p. 295] The end of December 1932 was marked by
an increase in repressions that were the direct work of Lazar Kaganovich:
• 8,407 individuals were shot, their entire families exiled to concentration camps in the north, and all their property confiscated;
• the urban population was now put under a passport regime, which effectively tied the rural population to their kolhosps, with no right to
leave;
• during a five-day period, all available kolhosp seed stores were taken away, including those needed for sowing and to complete the grain
requisition plan (CCCP(b)U Directive of December 24, 1932).
Grain requisition continued through January and February 1933, when there was in fact absolutely no surplus grain in the countryside. Seized
grain and vegetables were deliberately left to rot or burned. At the Kyiv-Petrivka station, in Chervonohrad, in Bakhmach, and other cities, grain
rotted, at the Tractor Collection Point, 20 cars of wheat were flooded, in Liubotyn in Kharkiv oblast, several tonnes of potatoes were allowed to rot.
Moreover, these points were reliably guarded by GPU military units. People went into the fields to find what was left behind in the frozen ground.
They ate dogs, cats, mice, and so on. In the end, some deranged people even ate human meat. Death ceased to be a tragedy. It became
salvation from the hellish tortures of famine.
Meanwhile Stalin, making a speech at the CCACP(b) plenum on January 7, 1933, presented a summary, announcing that the material standing
of workers and peasants in the Union was getting better with every year: “Only the vicious enemies of the soviet government can have any doubt
in that.” As to grain requisition for 1932, CCACP(b) issued a resolution January 24, 1933 that made its displeasure clear: “The Central
Committee considers it a given that the Party organizations in Ukraine have failed to carry out the Party task assigned to them, that is, organizing
grain requisition and carrying out the grain collection plan, despite a threefold reduced plan that was shortened to start with.” [1, p. 132]
Stalin and Kaganovich made no efforts to hide their distrust to individual Party leaders in Ukraine as well. With this CCACP(b) resolution, they
also dismissed several oblast Party secretaries: M. Mayor (Odesa), V. Stroganov (Dnipropetrovsk) and R. Terekhov (Kharkiv). Pavel Postishev
was now appointed Second Secretary of the CCCP(b)U and First Secretary of the Kharkiv Oblast Committee, while Khatayevich was made First
Secretary of Dnipropetrovsk and Ye. Veger was appointed to this position in Odesa.
At this time, mortality from famine reached mass proportions. Incidents of cannibalism and necrophagia increased. The Holodomor reached its
peak at the beginning of Summer 1933: unripe vegetables, fruit, berries and grain could no longer save human organisms worn out by starvation
and infectious diseases.
Stalin issued an order that the famine was to be treated as non-existent. In his speech at the All-Ukrainian Convention of Top Kolhospniks on
February 19, 1933, among whom were even delegates from starving towns, the Secretary-General cynically commented that “your current
struggles, Comrade Kolhospniks, are mere child’s play.”
At the XII Congress of the ACP(b) in 1934, the so-called “victory congress,” the People’s Commissariat for Defense of the Soviet Union, “Red
Marshall” K. Voroshilov, outdid even his own Generalissimo in terms of lies and cynicism: “We went knowingly for famine because we needed
grain, but the victims of this famine were the non-working elements and kurkuls.”
A one-time GPU employee and member of the Pobrebyshchensky Party County Council Bureau, A.P. Huba, recalls how Pavel Postishev referred
to the grain requisition work at the time: “Let the little guys eat potatoes and give their grain to the state. From the oldest to the youngest. We need
to bring Hitler to power to help the German proletariat.” This, in a nutshell, was the long-term imperial strategy of Moscow regarding the countries
of Eastern Europe.
There is plenty of food for thought here for scholars: Hitler and the Nazis came to power precisely in 1933, with the help of that same German
proletariat and the village farmer (bauer). Neither Ukrainian wheat, grabbed by force, nor any feeling of “proletarian internationalism” helped the
Stalins and the Kaganoviches in this situation. What help the Nazis come to power was the Holodomor in Ukraine. Because, in a mere eight
years, the German proletariat, well-fed by Ukrainian grain, saved by the famine in Ukraine, and armed to the teeth was busy trampling the fields
of its ally, the USSR.
AFTERWORD
In 2003, it was 70 years since the second famine-genocide took place in Ukraine. According to a Decree from the President of Ukraine, the last
Sunday of November is the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomor and Political Prisoners. In his address to the Ukrainian
People, President Leonid Kuchma announced: “We must acknowledge that this was genocide against the Ukrainian people.”
Unfortunately, this acknowledgement is not even enshrined in Ukrainian law. Yet international law and the living memory of the people urge this.
According to the Convention established by the General Assembly of the UN on November 26, 1968, there is no statute of limitations on crimes
against humanity, such as the Ukrainian genocidal Holodomor. And someone needs to be held responsible for this crime. Even the documents
mentioned in this paper, which confirm the nature of the crimes and reveal the criminals, should be enough to establish grounds for a court case.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ARCEC- All-Russian Central Executive Committee
AUCEC- All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee
AUCU- All-Ukrainian Committee of Unions
ACP(b) – All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik)
GPU – Government Political Administration
NEP – New Economic Policy
NKYu – People’s Commissariat of Justice
OGPU – Joint Government Political Administration under the Council of People’s Commissariats of the USSR
CPC – Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom or Radnarkom)
PCLA – People’s Commissariat for Land Affairs (Narkomzem or NKZS)
PCE – People’s Commissariat for Education (Narkomos or NKO)
Ukrainian SSR – Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
CCCP(b)U – Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sources
1. F. Vynokurov and R. Podkur, The Famine of 1932–1933, 1946–1947, Vinnytsia, 1993.
2. Famine in Ukraine (documents and materials), UHJ №9, 1989.
3. The Famine of 1933 in Ukraine: Testimony about Moscow’s destruction of Ukrainian farmers, Dnipropetrovsk, Munich, 1993.
4. V. Danylenko, “Documents of Soviet Intelligence Agencies of famine in Ukraine (1921–23, 1932–33, 1946–1947),” Pamyat’ stolit №3,
2004.
5. Collectivization and famine in Ukraine in 1929–1933, a collection of documents and materials, Kyiv, Naukova dumka, 1993.
6. M. Lukhina, Subjugation Through Hunger, Kyiv, 1993.
7. O. Mishchenko, The Bloodless War: A book of testimony, Kyiv, 1991.
8. Portrait of Twilight: Testimony, documents and materials in two volumes, Kyiv, New York, 1999.
9. The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1932–1933: Testimony from those who survived, edited by Yu. Mytsyk, KM Academia Publishers, Kyiv, 2003.
10. Subjugation by Famine, a collection of documents, Kyiv, 1993.
Literature
11. S. Bilokin, Mass terror as a form of government in the USSR, Kyiv, 1999.
12. The Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine: Through the eyes of historians, in the language of documents, Kyiv, 1990.
13. L. Hrynevych, “The Stalinist ‘revolution from above’ and the Famine of 1933 as factors of the politicization of Ukrainian society,” UHJ №5,
2003.
14. V. Danylenko, H. Kasianov and S. Kulchytskiy, Stalinism in Ukraine: The 1920’s and 1930’s, Lybid, Kyiv, 1991.
15. I. Diak, Who will protect our people and state: The Communist Party of Ukraine or a Ukrainian Communist Party?, Kyiv, 2000.
16. I. Drach, The Harsh Lessons of Being Ukrainian: The Famine of 1933, Suchasnist №11, 1993.
17. L. Kovalenko and V. Maniak, The Famine of 1933: National memorial book, Soviet Writer, Kyiv, 1991.
18. Collectivization and Famine in Ukraine: 1929–1933, Naukova dumka, Kyiv, 1992.
19. For Whose Benefit was the Holodomor?, Kyiv, 2003.
20. R. Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow, (in Ukrainian), Kyiv, 1991.
21. T. Kononchuk, “Towards the truth about the tragedy of the Holodomor of 1932–1933,” Pamiat’ stolit’ №3, 2003.
22. S. Kulchytskiy, 1933: The tragedy of famine, Kyiv, 1989.
23. Literary Ukraine, September 20, 1990.
24. T. Lytovchenko, “Silent Death: November 27 on the 70th anniversary of the Great Holodomor,” PIK №42, 2002.
25. O. Mykolaiovych, The anniversary of the greatest catastrophe in Ukraine, the Holocaust of 1932–1933,” NTSh Bulletin №28, 2002.
26. D. Solovey, Ukraine’s Golgotha, Drohobych, 1993.
27. Thirty-three: Famine, National Memorial Book, edited by L. Kovalenko and V. Maniak, Kyiv, 1991.
28. Yu. Shapoval, The Cheka, GPU and NKVD in Ukraine: Individuals, facts, documents, №8, Kyiv, 1993.
The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1932-1933: The largest ethno-national catastrophe of the 20th Centuery
Yuriy Murza
Student in the Humanities Faculty (History)
National University of the Ostroh Academy
Ostroh, Ukraine - 2004
CONTENTS
Foreword
Section 1. FORCED COLLECTIVIZATION AND REQUISITION: The basis for the Famine
Section II. 1931—THE START OF THE GREAT FAMINE
Section III. 1932-1933: GRAIN REQUISITION AND FAMINE
Afterword
List of Abbreviations
Bibliography
FOREWORD
A little over 70 years and three generations have passed. The first one remembers everything, the second saw nothing but heard, the third is
looking for the truth in documents marked “Top secret.” We learned about the famine only some 15–20 years ago; the entire Western world knew
about it but kept official silence.
There are few eye-witnesses alive today and it would be hard to find any of those who carried it out. And although this crime—holocaust and
genocide—is not that far in the past, it seems that everyone is trying very hard to make it eternally distant. Yet an answer is needed, first of all for
the sake of our own self-worth, which after 70 years of building “paradise” seemed worthy only of a place in hell.
The West puts enough money into studying its past so that the truth might be revealed. Until recently, possibly even today, we have done
everything to the contrary. Why now? Because the question stands whether anyone can name a single event that happened in the last decade
that clearly spelled out the tragedies of 1917–1921, 1932–1933, 1938, or any other years. The answer is no! That’s the way we deal with our
past. Do we have a right to demand an apology for the horror that was inflicted upon us if we ourselves cannot get it suitably recognized on an
official level?
At this point in time, very many articles have appeared that describe the terrible thirties, drawing particular attention to 1932–1933. The first
people to take on this task were generally people who personally survived or witnessed the terrible state of the Ukrainian countryside at the
beginning of the 1930s and were able to leave their homeland, not always of their own will, and to carry the truth to the rest of the world about the
real nature of socialism in the USSR.
Once Ukraine gained independence, the issue of the Holodomor became particularly pertinent. After all, we were now able to speak and write
the truth about those black and bitter pages of our history. It makes sense, then, to look at the work that has been done on this topic. Our analysis
will be limited to a few publications, as this essay’s goal is not to examine a broad range of sources and literature.
A collection of papers called Collectivization and Famine in Ukraine (1929–1933) illuminates the process that took place in the Ukrainian
countryside when force was used to establish total collectivization and resulted in the great famine of 1932–1933.
The book Who benefited from the Holodomor? presents articles from well-known Ukrainian politicians and academics about the conditions for
famines [sic] to happen in Ukraine. With the help of a wealth of factual materials, the circumstances and reasons are examined and those guilty
of these tragic events and their aftermath are named. Finally, what saved Ukrainians from utter destruction is emphasized.
In S.V. Kulchytskiy’s pamphlet, 1933: The tragedy of famine, the first Five-Year socio-economic Plan carried out by Stalin is described, key
elements of which were the total collectivization of farmsteads and the gradual decline of farm production under the influence of the production
schedules imposed on collective farms or kolhosps. The criminal work of the Emergency Grain Requisition Commission run by Molotov, which
operated in Ukraine from November 1932 to February 1933, is separately examined and an effort is made to assess the extent of the famine and
the demographic losses it engendered.
Another work is M. Lukhin’s Subjugated by Hunger, which brings to the reader’s attention sources on the history of the Holodomor of 1932–1933
available outside Ukraine. The basis for this publication are the materials gathered by the US Congressional Commission and the International
Commission to Study the Famine in Ukraine in 1932–1933, as well as the archives of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (New York).
Ukraine’s Golgotha, written by D. Solovey, is a true description of the terror and genocide against the Ukrainian nation after the failure of its
liberation efforts in 1917–1920. This work is unique in the breadth of materials it encompasses and at the same time its scrupulous attention to
detail, depth of analysis of historical events, along with the lucidity of its arguments and the clarity of its conclusions.
Ukrainian Holocaust is a collection of eye-witness accounts of those who survived one of the most terrible tragedies in human history, the
genocidal famine of 1932–1933 that was intended to destroy the Ukrainian nation. These testimonies, collected for over a decade, make it
possible to see the effect of the terrifying mechanism used to destroy Ukrainian farmers and to bring to light those pages of Ukraine’s history
that had been hidden until now.
The goal of this paper is to show who were the ideologues and organizers of the 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine and to present the main
preconditions.
Achieving this goal involves a number of tasks: tracing the genesis of the Holodomor, identifying those who were responsible for the events of
1932–1933, and reflecting the attitude of contemporaries to those tragic years.
The chronology of this essay covers the pre-famine period and 1932–1933 directly.
This work is based on a clear set of resources. These are primarily published materials that have been preserved in the Central State Archives
of Ukraine’s higher bodies of government and administration, the Central State Archives of Community Associations in Ukraine, and memoirs.
For a long time, the main source of information on events connected to the Holodomor were the memoirs of contemporaries. As with many
memoirs, however, these typically lacked factual confirmation, which prevented them from functioning as documentaries. They tended to be
subjective accounts lacking in detail; sometimes they included exaggerations or second-hand information, making them less than objective. But
these kinds of shortcomings do not prevent published memoirs from being a valuable resource for historians.
By summarizing these materials and using them with a critical eye, the author believes he has objectively presented the topic.
The structure of this essay includes a foreword, three sections, a conclusion, a list of abbreviations, and a bibliography of sources and literature.
SECTION 1. FORCED COLLECTIVIZATION AND REQUISITION: THE BASIS FOR THE FAMINE
The countryside seems dead. When evening comes,
Not one singing voice can be heard anywhere,
Only news, grave and terrible news:
Hunger marches implacably through the villages.
O. Odnomarenko, “1932–33”
The Famine of 1932–1933, that enormous catastrophe for the Ukrainian people inspired by the top leadership of the USSR, remains, even after
more than half a century, an absolutely taboo page in soviet history. The silence surrounding the Famine and the cover-up of any and all
information about it was part of the official policy of the Communist Party and this had a negative impact on the documentation of events as well—
the main source of information.
The Holodomor has no equivalent in the history of other peoples in Europe. In many of its aspects, it merits the name being called the Ukrainian
Holocaust: it was on a much larger scale than the two other 20th century European holocausts, the Jewish and the Armenian ones, although the
means used to implement it were significantly different.
The impact of this particular Holocaust is distinctive not only for the number of Ukrainian victims but also for the catastrophic consequences for
the ethnic stability of the national organism over subsequent decades, up until this day. As a tragedy whose scale is impossible to conceive, the
Holocaust traumatized an entire people, leaving on its body deep social, psychological and democratic scars that it carries to this day.
Perhaps the most important aspect of this tragic famine is that it was completely preventable…
As to the period in the run-up to the Holodomor of 1932–1933, it is described in a number of documents that have already been made public.
How did this happen?
Even a superficial review of specific documents provides evidence that market relations between the city and the countryside, that is, the
procurement of grain on the market that was instituted by the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921, was seen as a mistake by Party leaders. [4, p.
256] Market relations made it difficult for the state to rob its farmers even when overly low prices were set for the grain compared to prices for
industrial goods. The Bolshevik state needed bread to be completely free.
At the beginning of 1928, after the 15th Congress of the All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik) that ran December 2–19, 1927, the Bolsheviks
amended their bow to the right and threw themselves into industrialization. In January 1928, the soviet Council of People’s Commissars (CPC)
passed a resolution to collect all payments from rural areas in advance. This was the start of force being used against the country’s farm sector.
On order from Moscow in July 1929, the year of the “great breakthrough,” the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (AUCEC) and the CPC
issued a resolution “On expanding the power of local councils to facilitate the enforcement of national objectives and plans.” [3, p. 624] This
resolution required all levels of government to organize the completion of the grain production plan by the wealthier farmer-peasants and there
was no discussion of procurement. A class war was instigated: poorer peasants tattled on the wealthier. Penal government agencies were set
up.
All this is testified by the numberless reports from organizational committees on the progress of grain requisitions, such as “The Report of the
Lubny Organizational Committee of the AUCEC on the forced requisitioning of leftover grain” of January 27, 1929. To quote the document directly:
“The main form of influencing kurkul [kulak in Russian] farmsteads during the grain production campaign of 1927–1928 was through the courts.
A total of 116 persons were sentenced to prison under Art. 127 of the Communist Constitution: 50 wealthy kulak-types (43%), 32 merchants
(27.4%), 31 small farmers (27%), and 3 farmhands (2.6%)… Along with attacks on the kurkul through the court system, there was an organized
campaign among the poor, an intensification of class warfare through meetings with village activists, meetings with farmhands and small
farmers… the direct participation [of farmhands] in grain requisitioning as counteragents, the exposure of kurkuls who held on to their grain in
order to speculate on it, and so on.” [18, p. 44]
This document makes it clear that even using punitive methods failed to take all the grain away from free farmers. This is when the CP
leadership decided to go for total collectivization.
The first phase of the total annihilation of peasantry as the ethnic foundation of the Ukrainian people began in the “year of the great
breakthrough,” 1929–1930. This was when “dekurkulization” first became official, as a result of which 1.3 million individuals were mainly
deported from Ukraine but also destroyed. [25, p. 14] In November 1929, the plenum of the CCCP (b) [Central Committee of the Communist
Party] passed an even stricter resolution “On agriculture and work in the countryside,” where it was required that Ukraine institute collective
farms [kolhosps] in the shortest possible time. V. Molotov, L. Kaganovich and Kaganovich’s representative in Ukraine, General Secretary of the
Communist Party (b) of Ukraine Stanislav Kosior insisted that total collectivization be achieved within a single year.
To consolidate these demands, the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik) [CCACP(b)] adopted a resolution on
January 5, 1930, “On the pace of collectivization and the means of state support for building collective farms.” The Bolsheviks were keen to
complete collectivization in Fall 1931 or Spring 1932. But in a February 24, 1930 instruction addressed to all Party members, Kosior demanded
that “the collectivization of Ukraine be completed in 1930.” The main aims of setting up kolhosps were:
- virtually free access to farm products;
- total control over farmers;
- carrying out a propaganda campaign. [26, p. 175]
Officially voluntary, collectivization was actually forced and led to a situation in Ukraine that bordered on civil war: brother against brother,
farmhands pointing fingers at small farmers and kurkuls, and the middle group tattling on the kurkul. The Party had the right to determine
allowable assets for a villager at its own whim. [5, p. 123]
With the campaign against “kurkuls” and “small farmers,” the most productive and most organized groups of villagers were deliberately being
destroyed. If a farmhand refused to join a kolhosp, he was labeled a “kurkul sympathizer” and found himself where the kurkuls were. [6, p. 264]
Established in this way, the kolhosps became a state organization. In contradiction to the status of a kolhosp, county Party organizations
appointed the heads of these collective farms, effectively completely usurping village governments. Village or hamlet councils became mere
marionettes. The kolhosps were now run by people who had little or no connection to agriculture and who were quite unable to organize
production properly. With Party cliques applying force and the state brutally exploiting farmers—now more like serfs than ever before—, who were
unable to use the fruits of their own labors, the system of collective farms collapsed. [15, p. 36]
Recognizing the threat to their very existence, kolhosp workers began leaving collective farms in droves. One popular ditty among young people
in those days was:
Rise, Lenin, see how the komnezam [kolhosp] is working
Krupska’s playing harmonica, Stalin’s dancing a sharp hopak
Ukraine now drinks a hundred grams per ration
In one of the typical 1,500 complaints that came to receiving manager of the AUCEC, H. I. Petrovskiy in the single month of August 1932,
especially from kolhosp workers in the village of Semerynka, Trostianets county in Kharkiv oblast, the general reason why people were leaving
the collective “paradise” were: “When we joined the kolhosp, our land was made common, all our property, our seeding materials, and we
began to work it all ourselves. Now the kolhosp is not paying us, it’s not giving us our day pay, and it’s not giving us out our land plots. Kolhosp
workers have nothing to wear and nothing to eat.” [12, p. 235]
The trusting kolhosp workers had little idea that every protest, even such passive ones, were carefully being surveilled by the Ukrainian SSR
State Department of Politics [GPU] watchdogs and dealt with the situation very harshly. The deputy head of the Ukrainian SSR GPU, K. Carlson,
wrote the following in an informational note to the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Ukraine on July 13, 1932: “Additional reports coming in
from local GPU offices signal that requests from kolhosp workers to leave their collective farms continue to grow… The passivity of these
organizations (local and county governments) is particularly striking in terms of taking available measures to prevent people from leaving the
kolhosps.” [12, p. 205–207] Moscow’s reaction to this bad news was instantaneous.
On July 25, 1932, Kaganovich and Molotov, through OGPU representative Nauman, sent a telegram to the CCCP(b) of Ukraine and the Ukrainian
Council of People’s Commissars with the immediate demand: “…to get that breakthrough in grain production and to obligatorily carry out the
plan for July. Telegraph about measures adopted.” [12, p. 222]
In order to prove whether the Famine was man-made or the result of a failed harvest, some convincing facts can be called on that put to rest
various rumors of poor weather conditions in 1932, whether there was a poor harvest, and what the previous year’s harvest had been.
For instance, in 1917, the year of the revolution and a year in which many normal processes and cycles were understandably disrupted, the
gross harvest of grain in Ukraine was 1,108 million puds [1 pud = 16.36 kg] or 28.5% of the overall harvest in the Russian empire. The surplus,
that is, the grain that was over and above domestic needs, was 470 million puds.
According to the Brest Peace Accord signed between the Ukrainian National Republic and the Alliance on January 27, 1918, the Central Council
had committed itself to deliver Germany and Austria-Hungary 60 million puds of grain. Unsurprisingly, these millions were also referred to as
“surplus” in all official documents and there were no doubts in the minds of experts that they existed. Yet it’s worth noting that throughout the
second half of 1917, grain was being supplied both to Russia and, more importantly, to its many millions of soldiers on the front. During the
period from December 1917 to April 1918, when the soviets first temporarily dominated Ukraine, at least a quarter—and possibly even closer to
a third—of the amount of grain promised to the Germans was being shipped out of the country.
Yet this did not lead to famine in 1918. What’s more, given that there was a civil war going on, Austro-German occupation and endless uprisings
in the countryside against the occupiers and hetmanate, the harvest was an impressive 970 million puds. Neither the Germans nor the
Austrians had expected anything like this when, under the pretext that the country had not carried out its commitments under the Brest treaty, they
anticipated forcing Ukraine to sign new documents on shipping 35% of the 1918 crop out of the Ukrainian State. Still, 35% was actually 344
million puds looked so openly rapacious and astronomical to all that, for “diplomatic” reasons, official documents began to use “more
acceptable” terms—no less than 75 million puds. [7]
The Germans, of course, were unable, for well-known reasons, “take theirs.” Still, for Ukraine, 1919, with its soviet procurements and White
Guard requisitions, likely proved no less of a challenge than the previous year. And still there was no famine. Moreover, at the 4th Congress of
the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine in March 1920, it was officially stated that surplus grain from the previous harvest in Ukraine was nearly 600
million puds. [8] Not a single year after the revolution, not even 1921–1922 produced such a poor crop that the country was unable to supply its
population. Yet, in 1932–1933, when there were no wars going on, famine scourged the country like a real war, a silent war…
SECTION II. 1931—THE START OF THE GREAT FAMINE
Those who have studied the famine of the 1930s in Ukraine generally label it chronologically as “The Famine of 1932–1933.” This is an
approximation. There are both documents and testimony from eye-witnesses that the famine actually began in 1931.
One sample of such a testimony, provided by D.Z. Kalenyk of Uman county in Cherkasy oblast: “Because of this total theft (the requisition of
grain, vegetables, extra foodstuffs), people began to starve in Fall 1931 in the countryside, and by Winter 1932 this had grown into a terrible
famine. People looked like skeletons, their skin stretched tight, or they swelled up like beehives. The massive die-off began. 1933 was even
more terrible. By then, famine had hit every family. There were cases of people eating both the living and the dead. Those who could still move
around drifted like living ghosts around yards and gathering the terrible crop of corpses. They stacked them in mass graves and barely covered
them in soil…Sometimes, along with the dead, they would toss those whose hearts were still beating.” [27, p. 31]
The basis for a famine was established by the state over January–November 1930, when it took in the largest procurement of grain (400 puds)
from the kolhosps and family farms. The result of barbaric production plans in 1930 and mismanagement, already in the first half of 1931,
collective farms and private homesteads found themselves unable to cover their own needs until the new crop. There was a grain shortage. [20,
p. 240] People began to eat chaff, weeds, acorns and other plants; many grew seriously ill and the death toll began to rise. Meanwhile, “Papa”
Stalin expressed his satisfaction with the grain plans at the 16th Congress of the Communist Party in 1930, stating, “We are already resolving
the problem of grain generally with success,” to the accompaniment of tumultuous applause from his satanic henchmen.
The consequences of these “successes” were already being felt at the beginning of 1931 in the cries for help from hungry children, as can be
seen in the following:
- a letter from residents of a children’s home to the head of the AUCEC, H. Petrovskiy, dated March 10, 1931: “The kids are barely going to
school or their workshops… and many kids are leaving because of famine…;” [18, p. 298]
- a telegram from the Kamiansky County Executive Council in Dnipropetrovsk oblast to the National Education Commissariat about the lack
of food supplies in a children’s colony, dated March 21, 19931: “In Juvenile Colony 220, children are being removed from the centralized
supply of bread, decentralized supplies are forbidden, there are no local resources. Children are being left without bread…;” [18, p. 307]
- a letter from the director of the Sofia Juvenile Colony in Zaporizhzhia to the All-Ukrainian Cooperative Union about the threat of famine, dated
March 29, 1931 and many other documents (unfortunately, it is impossible to present all of them in this short paper).
But this is enough to question for a moment: Who is this? “Kurkuls,” “small farmers”? Or maybe “kurkul sympathizers”? No! These are not part
of the class war. These cries were from helpless innocents, Ukrainian children condemned to the inevitable hungry death by Stalin and
Kaganovich.
Children were dying, and with them the Ukrainian gene pool. Is any more evidence needed that there was a Ukrainian genocide? According to
Art. 2 of the UN Convention of December 9, 1948, “On preventing the crime of genocide and punishment for it,” genocide is defined as “actions
carried out with the intention of completely or partly destroying any national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.” Based on this Article, the
Ukrainian genocide is distinguished by two of the five forms listed: “(c) intentionally creating for any particular group such living conditions as are
calculated to fully or partly destroy it; (d) actions calculated to prevent procreation in the environment of such a group.”
Let the lawyers think about this one. We will continue to expose the mechanisms underlying the Holodomor as regards 1931 on a documented
basis.
Documents from this year radiate with finely phrased headings:
- “Consolidated report by Ukrainian SSR National Land Commissariat information groups about difficult conditions for maintaining livestock
and losses in the countryside,” dated January 25, 1931.
- “Consolidated report by the Ukrainian SSR National Land Commissariat regarding the collective farm movement in Ukraine and rural
resistance to collectivization” dated March 1, 1931;
- “From reports by Ukrainian SSR National Land Commissariat information groups on the progress of forced collectivization prior to the
spring sowing campaign,” dated 14 April 1931. These reported that the priest of the village of Rovenky had warned local farmers: “The time
has come when merciless anti-Christs are determined to bleed our hard-working people dry and push them to hell. You are being driven to
the kolhosps so that you can be the last. As a reward for this, the devil has already prepared hell. Live as your fathers lived before you…”;
- “Notice from cities to the Ukrainian SSR National Education Commissariat about the half-starved state of (rural) teachers” dated April 1931.
Documentation confirms that the forced nature of the collectivization in 1931 involved specially organized “towing brigades” of poor and small
farmers and criminal elements who were given unlimited powers and used “group and individual methods to work over farmers and
farmwomen according to drawn-up lists.” (“Consolidated information from Ukrainian Kolhosp Center on the work of towing brigades in getting
farmers to join kolhosps” dated April 16, 1931).
So much human anguish and pain are preserved in the archival materials those last hungry months of 1931! In one of the complaints filed
December 26, 1931, dying farmworkers from the “Free October” kolhosp in the village of Erdelivka in Odesa oblast beg (in the language of the
original) “the Central Executive Government and the All-Soviet Communist Party (b)” to pay attention to: “an entire village dying of hunger that is
turning to You for help. Having worked all summer on the kolhosp and giving all our seed to the fund as required by the county committee, which
now does not believe that our people have started to bloat from hunger and to eat horses that are dying for lack of food…” Unable to wait for an
answer from the Bolsheviks in Moscow, the villagers slowly died off.
Civil courage was also demonstrated by two students at the Air Force Academy in Moscow, O. Pakhomenko and Ya. Korkin, who were convinced
after visiting Ukraine of the evil deeds of the government towards villagers in Starobilshchyna and wrote an angry letter to “the All-Ukrainian
senior statesman” H. Petrovskiy on July 7, 1931. The authors of the letter pointed out to the “happenings,” “terrorizing,” and to the fact that
“managers of kolhosps are getting drunk on a regular basis,” “the reluctance of farmhands and small farmers to join kolhosps,” “demands of
fines from people and dekurkulization…in the most crude fashion possible…, sometimes even beatings… All those being dekurkulized are
driven out to ravines, so-called ‘gullies,’ …people condemned to famine…” What the end result was of this correspondence with brave students
at the Academy with Mr. Petrovskiy can only be imagined…
The massive attack of the “towing brigades” on the countryside made it possible for the state to extract 380mn puds of grain from the collective
farms and private homesteads in 1931. The harvest that year was much smaller than in 1930, yet losses were even greater because of the
mismanagement of the kolhosps and the unwillingness of collective farmworkers to work for nothing. By the end of 1931, the lack of food
supplies among villagers had led to famine.
SECTION III. 1932-1933: GRAIN REQUISITION AND FAMINE
At the beginning of 1932, the new and final phase of grain requisition from the 1931 crop began. The CCCP(b)U declared January 1932 a
“breakthrough.” The main class enemy in the countryside continued to be that same kurkul and the main one to blame for the failure of grain
requisition. Despite the fact that kurkuls as a class had already been destroyed, now all villagers suddenly became “kurkuls.” This meant that, in
Leninese, of course, “Requisitioning grain from kurkuls is not theft.” The grain requisitioning brigades worked full-force, like a team of torturers
straight out of the Middle Ages. Facts that confirm this are ample. Here is one.
The Haisynskiy District Prosecutor in Vinnytsia oblast, a man by the name of Horney, wrote a letter to the All-Ukrainian Central Executive
Committee January 22, 1932, in which he handed over evidence from an investigation “about lawlessness during grain requisition in the village
of Bdjil’ne, Teplytskiy County, in Vinnystia Oblast:” “Regardless of their social origins, villagers were called out to the brigades, brutally treated,
insulted in various ways and physically abused. For instance, Citizen Hyl’ko Krasnoperniy, age 67, a small farmer, tells how he was called out to
the brigade and when he appeared, they began to mistreat him, … and then began to singe his beard with matches. …But the brigade was
protected by those carrying out orders…
“Citizen Oleksandra Hubal’, a farmhand, testifies that despite the fact that she had fulfilled everything that was required of her in terms of grain
requisition, a brigade showed up at her house in the person of Verkhmiller and Tkachuk, who took every bit of grain away from her. When she
began to demand that they return it, they began to swear at her, threatened to trash her house, and mistreated her as well, pulling up her skirts in
front of her children. And one time the called her out to the brigade office and threatened to pour kerosene over her and set her on fire,… she was
pregnant and they were pushing her in the chest…”
In addition, Prosecutor Horney writes in this letter that grain requisition was being carried out in Telytskiy County by a brigade of 400 (The Flying
Squadron), run by the County Party Committee’s deputy (CPC). “The village was completely militarized. Brigade members in pairs were
garrisoned with the farmers who had not completed their grain requisitions. And these farmers were required to feed and house the brigade
members until such time as they completed their quota.” [18, p. 398] At the end of the letter, Prosecutor Horney promised, “After the conclusion of
the investigation, a copy of the conclusions of guilt will be sent to you,” meaning the AUCEC. The Prosecutor was not defending the interests of
the robber state, but of his condemned countrymen…
This one fact alone shows precisely how the clearly haphazard, Moscow-organized 356 million pud grain requisition plan was being carried out
in Ukraine in 1932. This 1932 grain campaign turned into a real act of terrorism against farmers, carried out by “flying squadrons” under the
command of party committees and commissions that were guided by the Stalinist slogan: “Peasants can only be pacified if you break their
backs.” Even participants in the building of the “bright future,” the komsomols, looked in horror at the policies being carried out by Moscow.
For instance, a student komsomol called H. Tkachenko wrote a letter to Stanislav Kosior in which he described the terrible scene of the
Holodomor at the beginning of Summer 1932 in Kyiv oblast: “Tens and hundreds of instances when kolhosp workers go out into the fields and
simply disappear, and after a few days they are found rotting and their bodies are taken, absolutely without any pity, as though this were
completely normal, and tossed into a hole and that’s it. And the next day, those who buried them are also found dead. They’re dying of hunger.”
He put a question to the CCCP(b)U Secretary-General and then answered it himself: “Now, honorable Stanislav Vikentiyovych, is this the path to
socialism? This is the path to decay and death. How can we possibly build socialism like this?” [9]
One unusual letter came from workers in Belarus to the CCCP(b)U. It is dated July 15, 1932. They wrote: “Since when did Belarus ever feed
Ukraine? There have been worse years [author’s emphasis], but Ukraine fed Belarus, but now it’s the other way around. Belarus is not against
helping Ukrainian kolhosp workers and hardworking villagers in an organized manner, but not the way it’s being done now, when you can’t walk
by or drive, on the railways or on the road without running into Ukrainians. Everywhere, numberless hungry, shabby Ukrainians are milling
around the streets in Belarusian towns.” [10] It is painful to read these sentences… The people who were feeding Europe were themselves
dying of hunger!
In July 1932, the III Congress of the CP(b)U took place in Kharkiv, with the participation of members of the Central Committee of the All-Soviet
Communist Party (Bolshevik) Politburo, Lazar Kaganovich and Viacheslav Molotov, and they elected Josef Stalin their honorary head.
Under the watchful eye of the Moscow bosses, CCCP(b)U Secretary-General Kosior reported the results of the Spring 1932 sowing campaign
and the grain requisition and harvesting campaigns, noting that 50% of the harvest had been lost and the territory sown had shrunk by 2 million
hectares. AUCEC Chair Petrovskiy and others noted “problems with food supplies,” while Molotov noted that “quite a few counties ran into a
difficult situation with food because of mistakes and lapses during production.” Kaganovich called on everybody to “increase the profitability of
kolhosps… and kolhosp workers.” In a charnel house atmosphere, with Kaganovich and Molotov putting on pressure, the fateful Congress failed
to provide a real assessment of the situation in Ukraine and the word “famine” never crossed anyone’s lips. Instead, a cabalistic grain
requisition plan of 356mn puds was approved for Ukraine in 1932.
The throat of the peasant found itself ever more gripped by the “skeletal hand of hunger.”
On July 25, 1932, the first news of cannibalism in Ukraine reached the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine. It is
naïve to imagine that Kaganovich and Molotov had no idea what was going on in Ukraine, having been at the III Party Congress. Of course they
knew! On April 28, 1932, Ukrainian Secretary General Kosior had sent a complete report of the letters sent to the Central Committee, to Stalin
personally, and to the Ukrainian Central Committee regarding grain requisitions and famine in Ukraine. In an April 26 letter, Kosior informed
Stalin thus: “We have some individual cases and even the occasional village that are experiencing famine, but this is only the result of local
neglect and exaggeration. Grain shortage and famine are a topic that the kurkul and his agents are turning into a major issue.” [13, p. 55]
Driven to despair, kolhosp workers in Fastov wrote a letter to Stain in April 1932: “Our hardworking kolhosp workers have not even a scrap of
bread. There are even some who, with nothing to eat, are starting to bloat from hunger. The kolhosp horses are dying and people are dividing
them up and eating them, which is leading to widespread disease. We are asking why bread is cheap and there’s as much as you want in
Voronezh, Annovka, Moscow, Tiflis [Tbilisi. Ed], and Crimea, while in Ukraine there is none.” [12, p. 152]
This was written at a time when state elevators were flooded with grain, when it was swiftly being transported to distilleries for alcohol and vodka
production to Moscow, Ivano-Voznesensk and other Russian cities and for export to Western Europe. In one year alone, exports of grain reached
18 million centners.
By the time Summer 1932 came around and the half-starved kolhosp workers began to sneak out into the fields at night in the hopes of cutting
themselves some unripe sheaves or during milling to hide a fistful of grain in their waistbands or in their pockets, the organizers of the famine
from the Central Executive Committee and the County Party Committee passed a resolution on August 7, 1932, “On guarding the property of
state companies, kolhosps and cooperators and for increasing communal (socialist) ownership,” known popularly as the “law of five sheaves.”
According to this Resolution, so-called theft of state property was punishable by a prison term of no less than 10 years with confiscation of all
property or by firing squad. Using this resolution, all party state structures went into action, especially the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR, headed by
S. Redens and his deputy, K. Karlson. The result of their work was swift in coming: 55,000 individuals were sentenced, including 2,100 to the
firing squad. Many country dwellers and their children were killed by overseers on the spot for having “stolen” sheaves of wheat.
In order to get every last bit of grain from villagers and to prevent them from buying it at the kolhosps, the Politburo of the CCCP(b)U issued a
resolution on August 9, 1932, “On measures to combat speculation in grain,” according to which “…kolhosps have permission to trade in grain
only after January 15, 1933, after the full requisition of grain for the Union. …We must strike a blow against re-sellers and speculators, the
wealthy kurkul elite and small farmers…, we must act cleverly, forcefully, using repressive and administrative measures through the courts…
With this decision, the GPU and the People’s Commissariat of Justice should be given orders in their various spheres.” [12, p. 222]
Thus, the complete confiscation of grain from the Ukrainian countryside was to be completed by January 15, 1933.
To ensure the carrying out of this resolution, in October 1932, Moscow sent a commission to Ukraine, led by V. Molotov and including
Kalmanovich, Sarkis, Markevich and Krentsel, while the first deputy of the USSR GPU, I. Akulov, was appointed member of the Politburo and
Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U, while the Secretary of the Party’s Central Volga Province Committee, Mendel Khatayevich, was
appointed to the Politburo and made Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U. Ongoing control of their activities was charged to
Kaganovich.
The Molotov Commission operated in Ukraine until the end of January, 1933, to the conclusive victory of operation “Holodomor.” After this,
Molotov, like Pilate, washed his hands… The commission left no documentary traces of its presence in Ukraine. All the orders and resolutions
issued by the Commission were done verbally. Any formal documents were signed by the minions of the Moscow bosses in Ukraine—Kosior,
Chubar and other managers of the Party-State’s repressive apparatus under the strict oversight of the commission and on condition that the
content of such documents would reflect the “Party’s general line.” Every one of these documents was another mortal blow on the swollen-
bellied, starving Ukrainian villager. Each one harder than that last. The “beauty” of the names of these documents is evident without further
comment. The examples that follow are a small selection:
1. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of October 25, 1932 “On the need to close the gap in Ukraine’s execution of the grain requisition plan,”
demanded: “Celebrate the October [Revolution] Anniversary with a tenfold increase in the pace of grain collection…, organize uninterrupted
Red Cavalcades of grain deliveries, set up teams of the best workers and staff to carry out broad-based organizational work.” [12, p. 239]
2. Telegram of October 27, 1932 of Transcaucasus Provincial Secretary of the All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik), Lavrenti Beria about
speeding up the unloading of grain (23,000 tonnes) from Ukraine to supply the province: “We’ve already sent people (to Ukraine) to speed
up collection… ” [2, p. 413]
3. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 30 October 1932 “On measures to strengthen grain requisition:” “Mandate oblast committees to report
every five days on the progress of the grain requisition to the Central Committee of the CP(b)U. All members of the Central Committee and
other managers of central and oblast workers…are to completely switch over to working on grain requisition. Confirm the November plan
for grain requisition in the amount of 90 million puds… Carry on the Bolshevik struggle for grain…” [11, p. 197]
4. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 5 November 1932 “On increasing assistance in carrying out grain requisition on the part of judicial
organs:” “Mandate judicial bodies to review cases involving grain requisition without wait, as a rule, in all-day sessions on location and to
hand down the most severe punishments…” [14, p. 63]
5. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 18 November 1932 “On measures to strengthen grain requisition: “…Mobilize 600 Communist workers
from industrial centers by January 10, 1933, as support to rural organizations and to County Party Committees in key grain requisition
counties…” [16, p. 98]
6. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 18 November 1932 “On eliminating counter-revolutionary nests and destroying kurkul groupings:” “1)
Order T. Redens, together with T. Kosior, to put together a special operative plan to wipe out the main kurkul and Petliura counter-
revolutionary nests by November 23… In particular, Chernihiv, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Vinnytsia oblasts are singled out in terms of increasing the
terror against the kurkul. In the last month, some especially bold incidents of kurkul resistance have been reported (Chernihiv,
Dnipropetrovsk, and others)… Increase repression against kurkuls and other counter-revolutionary elements; hit them swiftly and
decisively.” [17, p. 385]
7. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 27 November 1932 “On using punitive measures against kolhosps that are sabotaging grain
requisition:” “Give priority to bringing to justice those born-again, kurkul-loving Party members from among kolhosp management…
Communists who are helping deceive the state and are organizing sabotage of grain requisition should be particularly severely judged.”
[21, p. 101]
8. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 29 November 1932 “On the progress of carrying out the October 30 and November 18, 1932 Politburo
resolutions on grain requisition.” (demand to increase the terror)
9. CCCP(b)U Politburo Resolution of 5 December 1932 “On measures to eliminate the sabotage of grain requisition that is being carried out
by kurkul elements.” According to this resolution, punitive court quartets (later trios) are set up consisting of the First Secretary of the
Oblast Committee, the Oblast Control Commission, the Director of the Oblast Department of the GPU, and the Oblast Prosecutor.
Notably, these and subsequent resolutions of the Politburo aimed punitive actions not only against Ukrainian villagers (kurkuls), but also against
that part of the village and county administrations that to some extent were trying to stave off the crazed, murderous Bolshevik attack on the
countryside. In his December 8, 1932 report addressed to the CCACP(b) in Moscow, CCCP(b)U Secretary-General Kosior provides data on the
state of grain requisitions in Ukraine at the end of November and beginning of December 1932. Among others, he notes that “the first serious
blow has been struck against kurkul elements and their acolytes, the organizers of sabotage against grain requisitions.” In November alone and
the first five days of December 1932, 1,690 individuals were arrested in Ukraine for failing to fulfill their grain plans. Among them, 340 were
heads of collective farms, 750 were members of boards, 140 were accountants, 140 were brigadiers, 265 were deputy directors of kolhosps,
and 195 were other kolhosp workers. [12, p. 282]
As we can see, the Politburo resolutions issued by Ukrainian Bolsheviks (under orders from Moscow) kept being issued like a conveyor, each
more demanding than the last. And still, it was obvious that the Party objective in 1932 regarding grain requisition in Ukraine was not being
fulfilled. More importantly, the pace of mortality began to taper off among villagers. It seemed that both the “red broom” and the Molotov
Commission and GPU had swept all the kurkuls, Petliurites, White Guards, saboteurs and speculators clean. The only immune ones remaining
in Ukraine were the Communists: their turn, too, was coming.
The Kremlin bosses were beginning to look beyond mere sabotage by all the various counter-revolutionary elements as the cause of the failure
of agriculture, but also at “betrayal on the part of the Communists,” and also at the fact that “in a slew of counties in Ukraine, Ukrainianization is
mechanically continuing.” In the Northern Caucasus (Kuban), too, there was a problem with “a lightly considered…, unbolshevik
‘Ukrainianization’ of nearly half the counties of Sevkaz [Northern Caucasus] with total lack of control over the Ukrainianization of schools and the
press…” Thus Stalin and Molotov signed yet another resolution of the CCACP(b) and the USSR CPC on December 14, 1932, “On grain
requisition in Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus and western oblasts,” which effectively legalized repression against kolhosp activists, including
communists: “Decisively deracinate all these counter-revolutionary elements using arrests, sentencing to concentration camps for long terms,
not limiting yourselves to the above-named punitive measures…” [22, p. 104]
Until the introduction of this document, Party satraps in Ukraine were directed by Molotov’s recommendations from his report to a meeting of the
All-Soviet Politburo August 3, 1932: “We are clearly confronted with all the signs of a famine… It is too late to back off now. We need to counter
the wave of peasant terrorism with a wave of Red Terror.” [23]
Without regard to the fact that the grain requisition plan in Ukraine had been adjusted to 267 million puds as of November 1, 1932, the
impossibility of carrying it out was obvious. Three years of uninterrupted rape of the countryside through the confiscation of food, the
disorganization of agricultural production, losses during production, and widespread famine in the countryside resulted in 136 million puds on
November 1, 1932 for requisitioning in Ukraine. Ration norms on state ration cards for foodstuffs were cut back for urban workers and state
employees and the flow of grain to export slowed down. In 1932, 107.9 million puds were exported, and in 1933, 105.3 million puds of grain went
abroad. As compensation for the shortfalls of grain, hundreds of masterpieces by famous painters and antiques were seized from Ukrainian
museums and shipped abroad.
As it turned out, the aggression of a Molotov, who chaired the Emergency Grain Requisition Committee in Ukraine, was not enough. With the
purpose of ensuring that the requisition plan and the Dec. 14, 1932 Resolution were fulfilled, Stalin and Molotov signed yet another Resolution
on December 19, 1932, that demanded that “Kaganovich and Postishev immediately leave for Ukraine to help the CCCP(b)U and the Sovnarkom
(Council of People’s Commissars) of Ukraine to take over key oblasts of Ukraine (Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and Kherson) as authorized by the
CCA-SCP(b) and the USSR CPC, sharing the work of Kosior, Chubar and Khatayevich…” [12, p. 295] The end of December 1932 was marked by
an increase in repressions that were the direct work of Lazar Kaganovich:
• 8,407 individuals were shot, their entire families exiled to concentration camps in the north, and all their property confiscated;
• the urban population was now put under a passport regime, which effectively tied the rural population to their kolhosps, with no right to
leave;
• during a five-day period, all available kolhosp seed stores were taken away, including those needed for sowing and to complete the grain
requisition plan (CCCP(b)U Directive of December 24, 1932).
Grain requisition continued through January and February 1933, when there was in fact absolutely no surplus grain in the countryside. Seized
grain and vegetables were deliberately left to rot or burned. At the Kyiv-Petrivka station, in Chervonohrad, in Bakhmach, and other cities, grain
rotted, at the Tractor Collection Point, 20 cars of wheat were flooded, in Liubotyn in Kharkiv oblast, several tonnes of potatoes were allowed to rot.
Moreover, these points were reliably guarded by GPU military units. People went into the fields to find what was left behind in the frozen ground.
They ate dogs, cats, mice, and so on. In the end, some deranged people even ate human meat. Death ceased to be a tragedy. It became
salvation from the hellish tortures of famine.
Meanwhile Stalin, making a speech at the CCACP(b) plenum on January 7, 1933, presented a summary, announcing that the material standing
of workers and peasants in the Union was getting better with every year: “Only the vicious enemies of the soviet government can have any doubt
in that.” As to grain requisition for 1932, CCACP(b) issued a resolution January 24, 1933 that made its displeasure clear: “The Central
Committee considers it a given that the Party organizations in Ukraine have failed to carry out the Party task assigned to them, that is, organizing
grain requisition and carrying out the grain collection plan, despite a threefold reduced plan that was shortened to start with.” [1, p. 132]
Stalin and Kaganovich made no efforts to hide their distrust to individual Party leaders in Ukraine as well. With this CCACP(b) resolution, they
also dismissed several oblast Party secretaries: M. Mayor (Odesa), V. Stroganov (Dnipropetrovsk) and R. Terekhov (Kharkiv). Pavel Postishev
was now appointed Second Secretary of the CCCP(b)U and First Secretary of the Kharkiv Oblast Committee, while Khatayevich was made First
Secretary of Dnipropetrovsk and Ye. Veger was appointed to this position in Odesa.
At this time, mortality from famine reached mass proportions. Incidents of cannibalism and necrophagia increased. The Holodomor reached its
peak at the beginning of Summer 1933: unripe vegetables, fruit, berries and grain could no longer save human organisms worn out by starvation
and infectious diseases.
Stalin issued an order that the famine was to be treated as non-existent. In his speech at the All-Ukrainian Convention of Top Kolhospniks on
February 19, 1933, among whom were even delegates from starving towns, the Secretary-General cynically commented that “your current
struggles, Comrade Kolhospniks, are mere child’s play.”
At the XII Congress of the ACP(b) in 1934, the so-called “victory congress,” the People’s Commissariat for Defense of the Soviet Union, “Red
Marshall” K. Voroshilov, outdid even his own Generalissimo in terms of lies and cynicism: “We went knowingly for famine because we needed
grain, but the victims of this famine were the non-working elements and kurkuls.”
A one-time GPU employee and member of the Pobrebyshchensky Party County Council Bureau, A.P. Huba, recalls how Pavel Postishev referred
to the grain requisition work at the time: “Let the little guys eat potatoes and give their grain to the state. From the oldest to the youngest. We need
to bring Hitler to power to help the German proletariat.” This, in a nutshell, was the long-term imperial strategy of Moscow regarding the countries
of Eastern Europe.
There is plenty of food for thought here for scholars: Hitler and the Nazis came to power precisely in 1933, with the help of that same German
proletariat and the village farmer (bauer). Neither Ukrainian wheat, grabbed by force, nor any feeling of “proletarian internationalism” helped the
Stalins and the Kaganoviches in this situation. What help the Nazis come to power was the Holodomor in Ukraine. Because, in a mere eight
years, the German proletariat, well-fed by Ukrainian grain, saved by the famine in Ukraine, and armed to the teeth was busy trampling the fields
of its ally, the USSR.
AFTERWORD
In 2003, it was 70 years since the second famine-genocide took place in Ukraine. According to a Decree from the President of Ukraine, the last
Sunday of November is the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomor and Political Prisoners. In his address to the Ukrainian
People, President Leonid Kuchma announced: “We must acknowledge that this was genocide against the Ukrainian people.”
Unfortunately, this acknowledgement is not even enshrined in Ukrainian law. Yet international law and the living memory of the people urge this.
According to the Convention established by the General Assembly of the UN on November 26, 1968, there is no statute of limitations on crimes
against humanity, such as the Ukrainian genocidal Holodomor. And someone needs to be held responsible for this crime. Even the documents
mentioned in this paper, which confirm the nature of the crimes and reveal the criminals, should be enough to establish grounds for a court case.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ARCEC- All-Russian Central Executive Committee
AUCEC- All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee
AUCU- All-Ukrainian Committee of Unions
ACP(b) – All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik)
GPU – Government Political Administration
NEP – New Economic Policy
NKYu – People’s Commissariat of Justice
OGPU – Joint Government Political Administration under the Council of People’s Commissariats of the USSR
CPC – Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom or Radnarkom)
PCLA – People’s Commissariat for Land Affairs (Narkomzem or NKZS)
PCE – People’s Commissariat for Education (Narkomos or NKO)
Ukrainian SSR – Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
CCCP(b)U – Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Literature
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