The Holodomor and the Soviet concealment of the famine

The spring of 1933 brought one of the worst catastrophes of Stalin's rule to Soviet Ukraine. Grain was being taken from the countryside on a massive scale, while private agriculture was being dismantled and increasingly severe requisitions were imposed on farming communities. Soviet workers and Communist Party members were sent into rural areas to enforce the collection of grain.

One account captures the mentality behind the campaign through the words of a participant who said, "We realized ... that it was impossible for us to live on the same earth as these bloodsuckers." As food disappeared from villages, people were left with little means of feeding themselves, and starvation spread across the Ukrainian countryside.

Modern demographic research cited in historical accounts estimates that roughly 3.9 million people died from starvation in Soviet Ukraine during the famine. The catastrophe became known as the Holodomor, and historians continue to debate the precise mechanisms, intentions and legal characterization of the famine, including the extent to which starvation was deliberately used as a tool against Ukrainians. What is clear is the extraordinary scale of the deaths and the central role of Soviet agricultural and grain requisition policies in creating the conditions that produced them.