In Ukrainian, the word Holodomor means “death inflicted by starvation.” From 1932 – 1933 millions of Ukrainians starved to death in a famine known today as “the Holodomor,” which was caused by the policies of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet regime.

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The famine was inflicted upon Ukraine in order to further two objectives. The first was to consolidate agricultural power by replacing Ukraine’s small independent farms with state-run collective farms in a process known as “collectivization.” The second was to discipline or eliminate those Ukrainians who wanted independence from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Stalin believed Ukrainian desire for independence posed a threat to his totalitarian authority. For that reason, the Holodomor aimed to destroy Ukrainians’ desire for independence by destroying their religious and civil leadership, as well as their language, culture, and traditions.

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In 1928, the Soviet government began the process of collectivization, confiscating all property belonging to independent farmers and forcing them to work on collective farms. Farmers who resisted these policies were labelled kulaks or kurkuls, meaning peasants who own more prosperous farms.” During this process farmers were thrown out of their homes, deported to the Russian province of Siberia, sent to Gulag labour camps, or executed.

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Things became worse. In 1932, the Soviet Union, at Stalin’s direction, imposed unattainable grain quotas on the amount of harvested grain Ukrainian villages were required to contribute to the Soviet state, and people began to starve. Villagers who could not meet these quotas were subject to searches by authorities, their food and livestock were confiscated, their villages blacklisted, and it was forbidden for them to receive any food, goods, or help.

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A decree known as “The Law of Five Stalks of Grain” was introduced in August of 1932, and forbade anyone, even children, from taking even a handful of grain from a field, as all grain was deemed to be state property. The punishment for violating this decree was ten years imprisonment, or the death penalty.  Additionally, Soviet authorities instituted an internal passport system and blockaded over a third of Ukrainian villages. As a result, the starving farmers and their families could not go in search of food, nor could any food be delivered to them. People caught trying to leave were sent back to their villages to starve.

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Despite these horrific conditions, authorities ordered local officials to impose even more unattainable grain quotas on the villages. The Soviet state extracted millions of tons of grain from Ukraine, which it used to feed Russian cities, and exported more than a million tons to the West, while millions of Ukrainians starved.

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The USSR denied that the Holodomor had occurred, and today, Russian continues to deny that the Holodomor famine was a state-orchestrated genocide against the Ukrainian population. However, since 2006 more than 17 countries – including Canada – have recognized the Holodomor as genocide.

 

From Five Stalks of Grain by Adrian Lysenko and Ivanka Theodosia Galadza, 2022 ISBN 9781773853758