The fourth Saturday of November marks the official commemoration of the Holodomor, a catastrophic famine that resulted in the deaths of millions of Ukrainians in the ussr* during the 1932-33 agricultural year. Estimates vary significantly, ranging from 3 to 11 million; however, most claim that around 4 million Ukrainians starved to death within this period (University of Minnesota, 2018).

According to the Holodomor Museum, by the spring of 1933, mortality in Ukraine had reached catastrophic levels. In June alone, “28,000 people were dying a tortured death every day, 1,168 every hour, and 20 every minute.” How did the breadbasket of Europe, the size of France, where over 80% of the population is comprised of rural farmers and villagers, experience a famine of genocidal proportions, and how do so many not know about it?

The famine in Ukraine was a calculated assault on the Ukrainian people on behalf of the soviet* government, a genocide orchestrated through starvation. The Holodomor title comes from the Ukrainian expression moryty holodom, meaning “extermination by hunger,” wherein food itself became a tool for state terror (Andriewsky, 2015).

Portnikov (2016) said it well: “The Holodomor was stalin’s* deliberate decision to destroy the Ukrainian countryside as the political and civilizational foundation of the Ukrainian people. This policy of state-imposed starvation led to a civilizational shock that affected millions of people. It led to the disappearance of Ukrainian life for many years, even decades. It led to fear of Ukrainian identity, of one’s own historical memory. The legacy of this terror is one of the important components of modern political life and culture in Ukraine. It is the single greatest hurdle to the ideals of the Ukrainian nation becoming its reality. It is what allows two identities to coexist in one country to this day – the Ukrainian identity and the soviet identity. stalinism, an ideology of fear, was fundamentally about destroying Ukraine’s will to revolt.  That is why the Holodomor happened. It was not just a desire to take away Ukraine’s bread. It was a desire to rob the Ukrainian people of their will and their future. And despite millions of victims, that is precisely what stalin and his successors failed to achieve.”

To fully grasp the complexity and impact of this event, it’s important to observe it from its unique historical context.

Pre-Holodomor

Historical Context

The russo-Ukrainian Relationship

The bid to escape russia’s* heavy hand had been a long road for the Ukrainian people. After the dissolution of the russian* monarchy in 1917, Ukraine seized the opportunity to sever a centuries-long tie (Nowytski, 1985). At the start of the following year, Ukrainians established an interim government, which declared itself the Ukrainian People’s Republic in 1918 (Holodomor Museum, 2019). Almost immediately afterward, the russian red army* attacked and ultimately defeated the short-lived republic, and by 1922, Ukraine was forcefully occupied via integration into the soviet union as the Ukrssr* (University of Minnesota, 2018).

ussr *Integration

In an attempt to bolster approval for his autocratic rule, soviet leader vladimir lenin* permitted limited economic and cultural autonomy in Ukraine. Economically, lenin’s agricultural concessions allowed Ukrainian peasants a modest degree of market freedom, easing widespread discontent with the harsh requisitioning of war communism*. Culturally, he extended the policy of korenizatsiia (indigenization) to the allowing the development of local languages, educational systems, and administrative institutions. (Kulʹchytsʹkyi, 2015). 

Ukrainian literature, theater, and visual arts saw renewed investment; writers such as Mykola Khvylovy emerged as voices of national expression, while Kyiv and Kharkiv became centers for modernist experimentation (Nowytski, 1985). Ukrainian-language schools expanded, new publishing houses opened, and religious life saw momentary pluralism through the growth of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

These developments helped distinguish Ukraine within the broader soviet framework, both culturally and politically, signaling a temporary loosening of russian dominance. This rising sense of national self-confidence spilled into the political sphere. The slogan “Away from moscow*” gained traction among Ukrainian intellectuals and party members, accompanied by increasingly bold calls for expanded autonomy within the Ukrainian communist party* (University of Minnesota, 2018). Though short-lived, this period planted the seeds of a distinct Ukrainian identity in yet another generation of a nation that later clashed sharply with the centralizing and repressive policies of the stalin era.

The New Regime

stalin’s* Rise to Power

By the late 1920s, josef stalin* had consolidated power over the soviet communist party (Kulʹchytsʹkyi, 2015). A fervent bolshevik, he dreamed of a prosperous, united nation-state with the communist vision as the fundamental pillar of soviet exceptionalism. In its current condition, the Ukrssr was a problematic inheritance: the growth of cultural autonomy coupled with waning russian cultural influence saw Ukraine on a inconvenient path of self-determination. The rise of nationalistic sentiments and a latent but growing counterrevolution, as he perceived it, represented a potential threat to his ambitions (University of Minnesota, 2018). Ukraine was vital to this vision and too important to lose, and therefore needed to be strictly managed.

Ukraine’s Importance

With an impending war on the horizon and a desire to be officially recognized as a sovereign state by the international community, stalin set out to transform the ussr into an industrial powerhouse and prove the legitimacy of communist rule (Andriewsky, 2015). To achieve this, the soviets needed to fund the purchase of Western technology by increasing their grain exports to maximum capacity (Nowytski, 1985). As the breadbasket of Europe with a predominantly rural population, Ukraine had promising capital to exploit. The solution, in stalin’s view, was to extract the necessary resources by restructuring the rural economy through forced collectivization. Ukrainian land would supply the agricultural output and Ukrainian people would supply the labor. 

Forced collectivization also served a political purpose: it was a mechanism to break Ukrainian resistance, force acceptance of a new communist order, and bring Ukraine more firmly under stalin’s control. It fit neatly within a broader strategy of subjugation, which stalin has already begun by targeting Ukraine’s political, cultural, and intellectual elites in earlier purges  Now, the entire nation was the target (University of Minnesota, 2018). The famine created by collectivization became a means to accelerate this goal, all the while meeting the regime’s greater political and economic objectives. 

The Famine

Collectivization 

Implementation 

The key mechanism of this new policy was the collectivization of the agricultural system, wherein land, tools, and livestock now belonged to the state (Kul’chyts’kyi, et al., 2008). Rather than work on their own farms and produce for themselves by way of collecting profit in an open market, farmers had to work for and be compensated by the state (Khlevniuk, 2008). From 1928 to 1930, in just two years, the portion of farms in the soviet union that had been collectivized increased from 11.7% to 57.2% (Basciani, 2011). The bulk of the harvested grain was forcibly requisitioned and set aside for government exports rather than compensating the rural labor force (Kul’chyts’kyi, et al., 2008).

Peasant Resistance

The regime under stalin imposed exorbitant grain delivery quotas and denied fair compensation to Ukrainian farmers for their labor, leading to increased peasant rebellions. This resistance often took the form of everyday defiance: peasants staged local protests, undermined the collection of grain from state procurement agents, withheld labor from collective farms, and slaughtered livestock rather than surrender it to the state (Kul’chyts’kyi, et al., 2008). The rapid pace of introduction, the inefficiency of the system, and the farmers’ resistance contributed to severe losses in the 1931 harvest, in what’s known as the All-Union Famine (University of Minnesota, 2018). Despite these failures, stalin forged on with his plan, and by 1932, 98% farms had been forcibly collectivized (Totten, 2018).

Cracking the Whip

The year 1932 marked the turning point at which localized holods (hunger crises) became a pervasive Holodomor, where hunger became a deliberate tool for control and starvation became state murder. Although Ukrainians only accounted for fewer than 2,000 of the nearly 14,000 rebellions in the ussr in the early 1930s, impossibly high grain procurement quotas and other punitive measures were concentrated on the Ukrainian population as stalin entered the next phase of his plan (Levchuk et al., 2020). By “cracking the whip,” stalin aimed to teach the Ukrainian people a lesson and force total capitulation to the new system. In August of 1932, stalin implemented the Five Stalks of Grain law, which declared all property of collective farms and cooperatives to be state property and imposed a penalty of imprisonment or execution for the theft of state property. (University of Minnesota, 2018). The law also called for officials to “conduct decisive battles with all anti-public, anti-kulak sentiments” (Totten, 2018, p. 57). Kulak/khurkul, literally meaning “fist,” was a term originally used for wealthier peasants but extended to all those considered to have the potential to mobilize the greater population against the soviet regime (University of Minnesota, 2018). Kulak became synonymous with Ukrainian elites, those at the center of Ukrainian national identity, notably the intelligentsia and the church (Andriewsky, 2015). By the start of 1933, 54,645 people had been arrested and sentenced, 2,000 of whom were executed (University of Minnesota, 2018).

The Shattering Blow

Blacklisting 

Stalin’s penultimate move to crush resistant farmers and anti-soviet kulaks in one “shattering blow,” as he described it in his own words, began in November of 1932 (Kulʹchytsʹkyi, 2015). The “Struggle Against Kurkhul Influence in Collective Farms” decree established a system of blacklisting that penalized the inability to meet the high quotas, cutting off any payment in the form of grain until they had been met (Andriewsky, 2015). 

In practice, blacklisting meant that for the majority of rural Ukrainians, there was no longer any trade in grain or other foodstuffs, stores were closed, and supplies such as food and livestock were taken away (Nowytski, 1985). The state imposed fines “in kind,” which consisted of house searches and seizures of all foodstuffs that the collection brigade could find (Kulʹchytsʹkyi, 2015). Blacklisting didn’t just apply to deficient farmers, but also whole villages with a history of bolshevik resistance or any link to anti-soviet activities or sentiments (Andriewsky, 2015). In this way, blacklisting functioned as both a means to erode the Ukrainian spirit by pushing them further into starvation and a scare tactic to dissuade resistance under the guise of meeting state delivery targets. Once a community was blacklisted, all residents, regardless of their role procurement,  were effectively designated by the state as kulaks and subject to punishment.

Blockading

In what historian Roman Serbyn referred to as “the smoking gun,” stalin issued a new directive entitled “Preventing the Mass Exodus of Peasants who are Starving” in January of 1933 that essentially blocked off Ukraine’s borders, preventing people from leaving or receiving relief supplies (Andriewsky, 2015). Farmers were no longer able to purchase a train or boat ticket without approval due to the denial of new internal passports (University of Minnesota, 2018). The restrictions were enforced by erecting watchtowers and dispatching troops across the countryside to intercept anyone attempting to flee or acquire food. These forces were authorized to use violence, including mass arrests, executions, and deportations (Nowytski, 1985). In conjunction with the food and travel restrictions, the escalation of state violence through the militarization of the collection brigade enabled the government to lay a quasi-siege to vulnerable civilians (Andriewsky, 2015).

Aftermath

By 1933, millions of Ukrainians had starved to death, been executed, arrested, or deported to gulags or special kulak labor camps in inhospitable regions such as Siberia (Basciani, 2011). In the 1932-33 agricultural year, harvest losses accounted for nearly half of the yearly supply for the Ukrainian countryside (Kul’chyts’kyi, et al., 2008). These losses were compounded by the labor shortages resulting from the decrease in able-bodied workers due to death, detainment, or weakness (Khlevniuk et al., 2008). The soviet government couldn’t allow word of this to reach its Western trade partners, so information regarding a famine in Ukraine was suppressed through sealing incriminating documents, manipulating census data, and controlling the media narrative. Through both physical destruction and deliberate erasure, the soviet regime attempted to hide the scale of the very catastrophe they had engineered. 

The Coverup

Soviet narrative

The narrative within the ussr was that any shortcomings in collectivization, evident in the harvest losses of the early 1930s, were the fault of Ukrainians. The government claimed that collective farms were infiltrated by counterrevolutionaries who concealed grain and sabotaged grain deliveries by refusing to sow for the state (Kulʹchytsʹkyi, 2015). In this way, the struggle for survival was painted as an insurrection, and any statements about the famine as man-made on behalf of the government were considered anti-soviet propaganda. The widespread belief in this narrative is reflected in a letter to the People’s Commissar of Health of the Ukrssr from a doctor in the Kyiv oblast, stating that “the politically harmful theory that starving people themselves are responsible for the famine is prevalent among leaders and rank-and-file workers; it is claimed that they did not want to work, so in that case, let them croak – no pity there” (Khlevniuk et al., 2008, p. 150). Meanwhile, outside of the state, the story was that collectivization was a success, the harvests were plentiful, the farmers are content, and therefore any famine allegations are preposterous rumors (Andriewsky, 2015).

The Media War

In addition to state publications, the soviet regime also propagandized through other countries to control the media narrative. The government invited foreign leaders and journalists on manufactured tours of Ukraine. These “Potemkin” visits showcased model collective farms, well-stocked shops, and handpicked villagers, all designed to conceal the reality of mass starvation. (Nowytski, 1985). 

The information war is best illustrated by the Duranty-Jones episode. Gareth Jones, one of the few reporters who attempted to reveal the starvation in Ukraine, was derided by journalist Walter Duranty, a soviet sympathizer who’d maintained that “the harvest is splendid and all talk of famine is now ridiculous” after seeing the countryside (Nowytski,1985). His reputation as a Pulitzer Prize winner and contributor to the New York Times lent his account more credibility; therefore, the general public remained unaware of the situation, and Western governments were provided with a pretext for their lack of intervention. Malcolm Muggeridge, a contemporary of Duranty and Jones, recalled that “when they were discussing the question of recognizing the Soviet Union, the articles of Duranty were considered as very valuable evidence” (Nowytski, 1985). 

Bernard Shaw, an Irish playright and polemicist, is yet another example of how the soviet state manipulated prominent Western voices. Shaw did not visit Ukraine during the Holodomor, which took place in 1932–1933. He visited the soviet union in 1931, before the most acute phase of the famine. Even then, Shaw saw only “Potemkin villages” and places specially prepared by the Soviet authorities for foreign guests. He was accompanied by guides who ensured that he did not see the real living conditions or famine.

After returning to Britain in 1931 and later in 1933, when the world began to learn about the mass famine in Ukraine thanks to journalists such as Gareth Jones, Bernard Shaw actively denied the fact of the famine. He publicly dismissed reports of famine as “slander” and claimed that he had not seen a single malnourished person in the ussr. His prestige made him a valuable asset to soviet propoganda efforts to deny the famine’s existence.

The soviet media strategy proved effective. Only months after the worst of the famine, the United States formally recognized the ussr, and they forged new trade agreements in November of 1933, earning a seat in the League of Nations shortly after (Totten, 2018).

Holodomor as a Genocide

Counterarguments 

Over the years, some have argued against the classification of the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a genocide, believing it should be referred to as a holod rather than holodomor. Their central claim is that it wasn’t orchestrated against a specific group of people, as it impacted all of the ussr (Levchuk et al., 2020). However, the regional population statistics tell a different story. While other republics experienced famine, Ukraine suffered disproportionately.A comparative analysis estimated that between 1932-1934 the Ukrssr’s excess deaths were 4.2 times greater than those in the russian soviet federation socialist republic* (rsfsr) (Levchuk et al., 2020, p. 495). They conclude that “although both republics have regions seriously affected by the Famine, they comprise a much larger proportion in terms of territory and population in Ukrssr than in the rsfsr” (Levchuk et al., 2020). 

Internal Soviet documents further weaken claims that the famine was accidental or uniformly distributed. Policies such as the “shattering blow,” punitive procurement practices, and the deliberate denial of aid to starving regions point toward a targeted assault authorized at the highest levels of the kremlin.

Internal Evidence

Even as the Soviet government publicly denied the existence of famine, internal communications make clear that officials understood both the severity of starvation in Ukraine and the impossibility of fulfilling procurement quotas. Documents uncovered after the fall of the ussr show that stalin was counseled not only about the starvation in Ukraine but also that the grain procurement quotas were set unrealistically high to begin with and were ultimately unsustainable for the rural populace. Yet stalin  continued to issue increasingly harsh directives. 

Reports from as early as May 1932 describe the mass starvation witnessed in the Zinovisk raion in internal memorandums, yet three months later, the kremlin launched the shattering blow (Totten, 2018). Stalin’s letter to his associate lazar kaganovich*, dated August 1932, exposes his perspective and motivations in regard to cracking the whip. He believed that “the main issue now is Ukraine. Matters in Ukraine are currently extremely bad. Bad from the standpoint of the Party line” (Totten, 2018). Rather than that of a population suffering from starvation, the problem presented is unrest. He stated that “if we do not correct the situation immediately, we may lose Ukraine” (Totten, 2018, p. 58). The “correction” stalin pursued was not relief but the escalation of suffering to enforce submission.

Pleas from Ukrainian officials were ignored. In late 1932, Grigory Petrovsky, a leader in the UCP, wrote to stalin and molotov* reporting a “desperate cry for relief” and acknowledging that the state had “greatly overdone” its procurements (Totten, 2018, p. 56). Two months later, Ukraine’s borders were sealed. In March 1933, Stanislaw Kosior wrote that starvation had “not taught any sense to the very many collective farm workers” (Kul’chyts’kyi, 2008, p. 6). The language confirms the soviet government’s clear intent to subjugate and reshape the Ukrainian nation.

Aid Restrictions

If the starvation was not intentional or punitive, one would expect the soviet government to have sent, or at least allowed, aid to the worst-affected regions. There was no lack of grain that the ussr could have given them to relieve the famine. Independent foreign actors had organized and attempted relief efforts but were denied by the soviet Red Cross (Nowytski, 1985). Metropolitan Mstyslav, who later became the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the U.S., reported the response they received was “what are you doing? Why would we need grain? We have had a wonderful harvest. There is no famine of any kind. This is nothing but anti-Soviet propaganda, that’s all” (Nowytski, 1985). 

Not only did they reject readily available outside aid, but there was plenty of state aid to go around. However, this was only given to those considered good and loyal workers (Khlevniuk et al., 2008). People who were unable to provide for the state, often due to age or physical ability, went without (Kul’chyts’kyi, et al., 2008). In 1932 alone, the amount of grain the government extracted was equivalent to a year’s worth of food for 12 million people (University of Minnesota, 2018). Even at its lower estimates, the state hypothetically could have fed the Ukrainians who ultimately perished in the Holodomor for at least four years. Additionally, the grain reserves inside the greater ussr, as recorded at the beginning of 1933, could’ve provided for more than 10 million people (University of Minnesota, 2018).

A Protracted Assault

Raphael Lemkin, the jurist who coined the term “genocide” and shaped the 1948 UN Convention, explicitly identified the Holodomor as “a classic example of Soviet genocide” and “its longest and broadest experiment in Russification” (Serbyn, n.d.). In his 1953 essay, he emphasized the complexity of genocide and its dimensions beyond just physical violence because of its particular ties to the process of colonization (Andriewsky, 2015). We often think about genocide as an official or unofficial mass extermination campaign, but it can present in much more covert ways, as a protracted assault on a people. 

In addition to targeted state violence against the Ukrainian population, whether from starvation, executions, or deportations to labor camps, the Holodomor was also an attack on Ukrainian society (Andriewsky, 2015). The state ultimately “deprived them of their land and very foundation of their social organization, erased their social identity by transforming and reducing a diverse rural pop into ‘kulaks’ and ‘peasants,’ extinguished the last remnants of village autonomy, destroyed a substantial part of their material culture, and devastated one of the vital seedbeds of the Ukrainian national movement” (Andriewsky, 2015, p. 43). The Holodomor was thus both a demographic catastrophe and a cultural assault intended to break Ukrainian resistance and reshape the population into a more pliant Soviet subject.

Legacy of Holodomor

Intergenerational Effects

Transgenerational Trauma

The impact of Holodomor is ongoing, as trauma is passed down through the family line and can affect the lives of descendants of survivors today, despite not having lived through it themselves. Studies have shown that psychological and physiological trauma leave imprints in our genes that are heritable and persist through several generations, resulting in generally poorer mental and physical health outcomes (González-Rodríguez, et al., 2023). The intergenerational effects of the Holodomor is an understudied field; however, the large body of research dedicated to studying the intergenerational effects of other historical genocides and famines can help fill in the gaps. 

Trauma Transmission

Epigenetic researchers postulate that the neurobiological responses to traumatic events “result in epigenetic changes that affect an individual’s genetic expression in utero, during early development, and throughout the life course” (Bezo et al., 2015). The physical experience of starvation also produces epigenetic changes due to the disruptions to the autophagy process, which essentially acts as the body’s weapon against extreme nutrient deficits (González-Rodríguez et al., 2023). This imprints on the genetic expressions of survivors and is passed to their descendants, and is “linked to neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer” (González-Rodríguez et al., 2023). 

Historical memory 

Repression 

The suppression of the Holodomor extended past the famine into the late 20th century, and as a result, an “awareness gap formed between the generation that experienced it firsthand and later generations” (Khlevniuk et al., 2008, p.11). The Great Terror followed on the coattails of the famine, wherein any anti-soviet activity was severely repressed and punished. Ukrainians were targeted in a mass dekulakization campaign that led to the deportation of thousands to special labor camps and gulags (Basciani, 2011). Until nearly the end of the century, no one was allowed to speak about any famine in the Ukrssr during the 1932-33 agricultural year (Totten, 2018). Families refrained from discussing it out of fear they’d be suspected of anti-soviet sentiments (Kul’chyts’kyi et al., 2008). The official and social suppression was lifted after the perestroika of the 1980s led to the fall of the ussr and internal documents were uncovered (Totten, 2018). This corroborated all of the previously discarded accounts from families of survivors in the West and reporters like Gareth Jones (Kul’chyts’kyi et al., 2008). Despite this development, the repression of collective memory has contributed to an erosion of the Holodomor’s historical memory.

Recognition

For much of the twentieth century, Western media and academic institutions hesitated to label the Holodomor as genocide due to limited documentation, political sensitivities, and Cold War dynamicse (Andriewsky, 2015). The tide began to turn when Ukrainian diaspora communities compiled survivor accounts, eventually inspiring major scholarly initiatives such as the Harvard Famine Project and the U.S. Commission on the Ukrainian Famine (Totten, 2018). After independence, Ukraine formally recognized the Holodomor as genocide, with President Yushchenko promoting public commemoration and historical study as state priorities  . In the following years, the famine was declared a genocide by the Parliament of Ukraine, and a museum memorializing the “Victims of the Holodomors” was created . Furthermore, “a vigorous international campaign was subsequently initiated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to have the UN, the Council of Europe, and other governments do the same” (Andriewsky, 2018, p. 20-21).

Lessons from Holodomor  

The Holodomor illustrates the lengths a government will go to subjugate a nation, and how easily settlement and occupation can transition into attempts at decimation if not kept in check. It warns us of what can follow when the state enacts the suppression of certain words and assumes a monopoly over the media, whether through disinformation, propaganda, or press restrictions. 

It also highlights our roles as global citizens. In their 1985 Commission, the U.S. verified that the government possessed credible evidence of the famine, but chose not to act (Totten, 2018). If other governments knew about it and did nothing, what they were really concerned with was not the political opinion of the international community, but rather the popular opinion, which had been widely manipulated by soviet disinformation. The Duranty-Jones episode shows that the tide of public opinion can be powerful in influencing foreign affairs. This demonstrates the importance of supporting Ukraine’s continued efforts to maintain its freedom from russian occupation; we must stay informed and inform others, and be on guard for disinformation.

The ongoing struggle for recognition reminds us of the importance of global solidarity with Ukraine today. Public awareness, memory preservation, and resistance to disinformation are essential to counter authoritarian strategies that echo those of the 1930s. As collective memory aids healing and honors the victims, the Holodomor must remain part of our shared historical consciousness. Individuals can contribute by learning about the tragedy, sharing its history, and observing the annual day of remembrance on the fourth Saturday of November each year.

“*” In honor of Ukraine’s dignity and in deference to the fallen men and women fighting to protect Ukraine’s right to exist, use of lowercase is intentional.