The tragedy Holodomor

International regonizing as a Genocide

By the end of 1932 Moscow's food-collection plan, which far exceeded the actual harvest, was 72 percent fulfilled. The food-collection plan for 1932–3 was based on the total area of land that was to be seeded. In reality, less land was seeded than planned, and even less produced the expected crops. Consequently the rural population was left without any means of sustenance, yet the authorities did not organize any supplies to feed the villagers.

The tragedy Holodomor

Famine-Genocide of 1932–3 (Голодомор; Holodomor). The mass murder by Josef Stalin’s Soviet regime of millions of Ukrainian peasants. In recent years this national tragedy has become widely known as the Holodomor (from moryty holodom‘to kill by means of starvation’). This tragic event was (1) a planned repression of the peasants of Soviet Ukraine for massively resisting the Stalinist state’s collectivization drive; (2) a deliberate offensive aimed at undermining, terrorizing, and neutralizing the nucleus and bulwark of the Ukrainian nation and recent Ukrainization efforts; and (3) the result of the forced export of grain, other foodstuffs, and livestock in exchange for the imported machinery the USSR required for the implementation of the Stalinist policy of rapid industrialization. In 1932 Ukraine had an average grain harvest of 146.6 million centers (15.5 million centers more than in 1928), and there was no climatic danger of famine.