Loans to the Dead

On 30 January 1933, Oleksandra Radchenko recorded the first death from starvation that she saw with her own eyes. “On the way to Zadorizhne, right next to the road, we saw a dead old man, ragged and thin.

The first official reports on the spread of the new famine be­gan to arrive in Kharkiv in early February 1933. Most of them per­tained to the boreal-steppe oblasts, especially Kyiv and Vinnytsia. But the first quantities of grain that Ukraine was allowed to take in order to cope with widespread starvation and growing famine did not go to Kyiv and Vinnytsia but to Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts. Kyiv and the boreal-steppe areas were overlooked by the center, which had control over grain depositories and supplies and, in the conditions of growing crisis, decided who or, rather, where people would live or die. Moscow needed peasants to live, or at least die at a slower rate in the areas that produced most of the grain—a policy that benefited the Ukrainian south. On 7 February 1933, the Politburo in Moscow decreed that Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts could use 200,000 poods of rye each to deal with the food shortages. On 17 February, the party authorities in Kharkiv decreed that additional supplies of grain and flour be sent to the industrial Donetsk Oblast.³⁵

The same “south first” policy continued in the second half of February. On 18 February, the Moscow Politburo decreed the release of a million poods of grain to Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, 0.8 million to Odesa Oblast, and 0.3 million to Kharkiv Oblast.

As the Union government focused on the south, it was left to the Kharkiv authorities to take care of the rest of the repub­lic. The problem was that the resources at the disposition of the Ukrainian government were minuscule compared to those avail­able in the center. By mid-March the party authorities in Kharkiv were swamped with reports of the skyrocketing mortality rate in Kyiv Oblast. “We have starvation and its consequences in 32-34 raions. In 16 raions we have 123 registered cases of cannibalism and eating of corpses (including 64 cases of cannibalism),” read one of the reports received by the Kharkiv Central Committee. “On the streets of Kyiv, the following numbers of corpses were picked up: January, 400; February, 518; in the first ten days of March, 249. In the most recent days, an average of 100 children [per day] have been left [in the city] by their parents.” In February 1933, the Kharkiv authorities gave Kyiv Oblast 60,000 poods of grain, followed by 80,000 in early March.³⁷

On 17 March 1933, the Central Committee in Kharkiv is­sued a special resolution on means of combating the famine cri­sis in Kyiv Oblast. An appeal was made to Moscow. This time the Moscow authorities reacted and allowed six million poods of grain to be taken from the central depositories to deal with the crisis. This famine relief measure had its effect. According to Oleh Wolowyna’s research, the relative excess death factor (the number of excess deaths in an area or population divided by the relative total population) for Kyiv Oblast fell between mid-March and mid-May 1933 by roughly 30 points, from 80 to 53.

The Kyiv crisis of March 1933 did not change the Union gov­ernment’s policy of offering assistance first and foremost to the main grain-producing oblasts in the south. On 28 May 1933, the Moscow Politburo adopted a resolution allowing the release of 0.3 million poods of grain each to Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa Oblasts. Donetsk Oblast received 0.1 million; the others—nothing at all. It was only after the Ukrainian leadership sent a special appeal to Stalin that Moscow agreed to give a fraction of the assistance it had provided to the steppe oblasts to those located in the boreal- steppe zone. Moscow allowed the provision of 200,000 poods of rye to alleviate famine in Kharkiv Oblast, 130,000 poods each in Kyiv and Vinnytsia Oblasts, and 30,000 poods in Chernihiv Oblast. For Kyiv and V innytsia Oblasts, Moscow cut the amount requested by the Kharkiv authorities by 15,000 poods.

This could not but have a direct impact on the worsening situation on the ground. In the following month the relative ex­cess death factor reached its peak in the boreal-steppe oblasts, approaching 90 in Kyiv and Vinnytsia Oblasts, reaching 100 in Kharkiv Oblast, and exceeding the 100 mark in Chernihiv—the oblast that received less assistance than any other in Ukraine. The difference between the boreal-steppe oblasts and those in the steppe zone could not have been more profound. The relative excess death factor in Odesa Oblast at that time was 50, while Dnipropetrovsk Oblast had a factor of 30, and Donetsk Oblast a factor of 15.⁴⁰

The central government’s policies favoring the steppe oblasts continued in the aftermath of the famine.