Famine and genocide of the Ukrainian people: What does Holodomor mean?
- Ryszard Skarbek
- Mar 15, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
At the entrance to the memorial park in Kyiv, a sculpture of a skinny girl with a somber look holds a handful of wheat. Behind her back is the Candle of Remembrance. This monument commemorates the great starvation known as the Holodomor in Ukraine (Ukr. Голодомор).
In this article, we will discuss whether the Holodomor of 1932–33 was a tragic famine or genocide and a deliberate attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation by the Soviets.
What were the causes of the famine in Ukraine, and when did it happen?
After the end of the First World War, Ukraine was an independent state. The Ukrainians considered themselves a Central European country, like Poland, and not an Eastern European country like Russia. However, in 1919, the Soviet Union initiated the first steps to take over the Ukrainian state and "suck" it into the Soviet states.
By the end of the 1920s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin consolidated his control over the Communist Party. Feeling threatened by Ukraine's strengthening cultural autonomy, Stalin took measures to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry and the Ukrainian intellectual elites to prevent them from seeking independence.
The peasantry was considered "custodians of traditions, folklore and music, national language and literature." Part of the plan was also the liquidation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
Despite strong resistance from the Ukrainian nation, their country disappeared and by 1922 had been declared the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR).
Holodomor's major causes combined deliberate policies and structural factors: forced collective farming, unrealistic grain procurement quotas imposed by Soviet authorities, mass confiscation of food and seed, restrictions on movement that prevented starving people from seeking food elsewhere, punitive measures such as blacklisting of villages and seizure of livestock, and continued export of grain to fund industrialization. Those who resisted collectivization were exterminated.
Poor harvests and weather in some regions aggravated the situation, but historians emphasize that policy choices and repression turned shortages into a famine in which millions of Ukrainians died.
In 1932, not wanting to lose control of Europe's main grain source, Stalin took away the land from the Ukrainian farmers and also all the grain, creating artificial famine. The goal was to "teach Ukrainians to be smart" so that they would no longer oppose Moscow. The people who produced the most grain in Europe were left without a crumb of bread.
When did Holodomor happen? The most intense period was late 1932 through the end of 1933, though effects continued beyond those dates. Estimates of deaths vary: most scholars place the number of excess deaths in Soviet Ukraine in the range of roughly 3 to 4 million people, with broader estimates (including affected regions of the USSR and demographic losses) sometimes higher. The exact death toll remains debated due to limited and contested archival records.
Ukrainian "Holodomor" means "Great Famine" or "To kill by starvation".
What does "Holodomor" mean? The word Holodomor comes from the Ukrainian language. It consists of the phrase "holod" (hunger) and "moryty" (to kill or to exterminate) and is commonly translated as "death by hunger" or "extermination by hunger." It is used to describe the catastrophic famine that struck Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933.
The peak of the Holodomor was in the spring of 1933. At that time, 17 people died of hunger every minute, more than 1,000 every hour, and almost 24,500 every day! People were literally starving to death in the streets.
Evidence of widespread cannibalism was documented during the Holodomor in Ukraine. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. In March 1933, the secret police in Kyiv province collected "ten or more reports of cannibalism every day". Still, they concluded that "in reality, there are many more such incidents", most of which went unreported. At least 2,505 people were sentenced for cannibalism in the years 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, though the actual number of cases was certainly much higher.
Stalin settled Russians into the emptied Ukrainian villages. During the next census, there was a significant population shortage. Therefore, the Soviet government annulled the census, destroyed the census documents, and the census takers were shot or sent to the gulag, to hide the truth.
Decision to recognise the Holodomor as genocide.
A United Nations joint statement, signed by 25 countries in 2003, estimated the number of Holodomor victims at 7–10 million.
Since 2006, Ukraine and 15 other countries have recognized Holodomor as a crime of genocide against the Ukrainian people by the Soviet regime. You couldn't learn about it in school because almost all evidence was destroyed, and victims were covered up for decades. To this day, mass graves are being uncovered.
Most historians, who have studied this period in Ukrainian history, have concluded that Holodomor was a man-made famine and a deliberate act of genocide. It was linked to a broader Soviet policy to destroy a significant part of the Ukrainian nation. Some of them recognize Holodomor as a genocide similar to the Holocaust.
The great starvation at that time broke the Ukrainian nationalism, but it did not destroy their identity and made the desire for Ukraine's independence from Russia eternal.
The Great Famine in Ukraine is commemorated in the country and by the Ukrainian diaspora worldwide. It remains a central event in Ukrainian national memory and identity, influencing historical scholarship, diplomacy, and public awareness of Soviet-era crimes.
The National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide was erected on the slopes of the Dnieper River, welcoming its first visitors on 22 November 2008. Each fourth Saturday of November, we mark the solemn anniversary of the Holodomor.
References:
Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC) at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.
Andriewsky, Olga (January 2015). "Towards a Decentred History: The Study of the Holodomor and Ukrainian Historiography". East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies.
Mace, James Earnest; Heretz, Leonid (eds.). Investigation of the Ukrainian famine, 1932 and 1933: Oral History Project of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine.
Davies, Robert; Wheatcroft, Stephen (2006). "Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33: A Reply to Ellman".
15th Annual Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Lecture and Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Symposium.
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