1932-3 Soviet famine

The 1932-3 Soviet famine, also dubbed the "Holodomor" by German and Ukrainian Nazis, was one of two famines under the Soviet Union, the other being the Nazi-caused 1946-7 Soviet famine.

The famine was a product of a drought which swept Ukraine's vast farmlands, and was exacerbated by rich Ukrainian peasants (kulaks) who owned most of the land. Whereas most of the Ukrainian peasantry had only their tools, a small plot, and a hut, the kulaks had a cottage, quality tools, indentured servants to perform the necessary labor, and large tracts of land. These peasants – less than 4% of the population – owned more than 70% of Ukraine's fertile land, the crops from which fed hundreds of millions of people. When Stalin sought to collectivize Ukrainian agriculture, seizing and communalizing their land, tools, labor, the kulaks hid food stashes underground, killed their cattle, and burned their crop fields.

In response, and contrary to retarded Nazi propaganda claiming Stalin deliberately starved millions, Stalin redirected Russian grain exports to Ukraine. This alleviated some of the hunger, but the kulaks' resistance fed the flames of malnourishment. Stalin thus sent the Red Army to forcibly remove and or execute the rich peasants, and to collectivize their land anyway.

The term "Holodomor" was coined specifically to equate or liken "Stalin's repressive totalitarian regime" and it's "genocide of Ukrainians" to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, in which Ukrainian Nazis collaborated and killed over a million Poles, Jews, Slavs, and Roma.

Overview

See also: Soviet Union#Collectivization

Collectivization raised grain output so much that the USSR began exporting grain. But terrorists wrecking the collective farms, combined with drought, caused a famine.

The wrecking was led by the kulaks. Some middle peasants joined in because of forced collectivization by local leaders (against Party policy). Bukharin and Trotsky and their followers supported both the sabotage and the forced collectivization, hoping to blame Stalin and take power.

Timeline

1928-1930: Dizzy with Success

Despite Stalin's orders, some collectivization was involuntary / excessive. Local Party leaders, out of idealism or corruption, forced peasants to collectivize by denying them water or education.

We know that in a number of areas of Turkestan there have already been attempts to “overtake and outstrip” the advanced areas of the U.S.S.R. by threatening to use armed force, by threatening that peasants who are not yet ready to join the collective farms will be deprived of irrigation water and manufactured goods.

What can there be in common between this Sergeant Prishibeyev “policy” and the Party’s policy of relying on the voluntary principle and of taking local peculiarities into account in collective-farm development? Clearly, there is not and cannot be anything in common between them.

Who benefits by these distortions, this bureaucratic decreeing of the collective-farm movement, these unworthy threats against the peasants? Nobody, except our enemies!

- Joseph Stalin, Dizzy with Success (1930)

Kulaks supported forced collectivization to discredit all collective farms. So did right-wingers like Bukharin, in secret.

1930-1932: Rectification

After Stalin wrote against forced and excessive collectivization in 1930, they were reversed, as local communists could point to Stalin's words as authority.

Some areas lost collectivization numbers in 1931. By 1932, collectivization had accelerated once again.

1932-1933: Sabotage and famine

Kulaks and some lazy farmers were stealing grain from the collective farms to resell it at high prices. On top of armed robbery, they would sabotage collective farms by attacking collective farmers and Party members, destroying tractors, and committing arson.

As the struggle with them intensified, kulaks burned crops and mass slaughtered livestock. This, combined with drought, caused famine. (Even a major anticommunist reporter admitted this.)

Kulaks organized uprisings and went to war with working peasants. Nikolai Bukharin and his Right Opposition in the Communist Party secretly supported them against Stalin.

The resulting crackdown saw the end of the kulak class - dekulakization. Grain robbers were sent to prison for 10 years. Many were deported to Siberian gulags. Terrorists and arsonists were executed.

Corrupt bureaucrats also oppressed collective farms and set up state farms to take from them. Some farmers rioted as a result. When Stalin and his allies removed the corrupt, farmers thanked them.

Incompetent officials who had allowed sabotage or forceful collectivization were removed.

Political departments were set up in 1933 to help farms work better, raising the harvest a lot.

Soviet aid

More and more aid was sent as the famine progressed, and Soviet grain exports stopped.

Myths/criticism

• "Why was grain exported from the countryside?"

To feed the cities. Feeding urban workers was prioritized because they did not produce their own food. Therefore more peasants died than workers.

• "Why was grain confiscated?"

To feed people. The Soviets rationed the grain to minimize starvation. Private owners hoarded it to sell at high prices, starving the poor.

• "Why did they crack down on peasants stealing grain from farms?" (Law of Spikelets)

So the state could ration the grain, instead of chaotic stealing and private hoarding.

• "Why did they execute so many?"

A ten-year prison sentence was given to those who stole. Execution was only for "systematic theft ..., embezzlement by organized groups, embezzlement on a large scale, embezzlement with violent acts, terrorist acts, arson, etc."

Genocide?

See also: Ukrainian nationalism

It is convenient for anticommunists to portray the USSR as committing an intentional mass murder equivalent to the Holocaust. However, neither the idea of a planned famine nor targeting Ukrainians is accepted by most scholars of the 21st century.

There is plenty of blame to go around. It must be shared by the tens of thousands of activists and officials who carried out the policy and by the peasants who chose to slaughter animals, burn fields, and boycott cultivation in protest.

- John Arch Getty, historian and anarchist

The officials responsible for forced collectivization certainly carry blame. Undeniably, so do the saboteurs. Yet they are not even mentioned in the average American discussion of the famine, and the policy of forced collectivization is blamed on Stalin, despite his vocal opposition to it.

Ukrainians demand special recognition. But every breadbasket region suffered. Kazakhs have taken offense to the "Holodomor", claiming they were hit the hardest. South Russia was hit hard too, but Russians get no victim card (even though Stalin was Georgian).

There is zero evidence Stalin targeted Ukrainians. Ukrainian officials around Stalin, like Kaganovich, Podgorny and Brezhnev, have to be presented as "not real Ukrainians" to justify the theory of the "Holodomor".

Ukrainians share the same language and culture with Russians. With Belarusians, they make up the East Slavs. But Belarusians never claim they were a victim of Russia.

The myth of Ukrainians being targeted was started by Ukrainian Nazi puppets. Nazi propaganda projected onto the Soviets their own plan to starve the Slavs, the Hunger Plan (which was one reason they set up the Ukrainian puppet state, to separate the Ukrainian breadbasket from Russia).

Further reading

• Soviet Union#Collectivization