Stalin’s Pacification of Ukraine and the Holodomor

Joseph Stalin held the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in an iron grip from Lenin’s death in 1924, until his own death in 1953. His ruthless ambition established him as an absolute dictator by 1937, calling the shots in the politburo, the highest decision making structure in the USSR.

All over its territories, the Communist Party had idealistically established communal farms to boost production. It was not so simple, however. Shortages began to bite everywhere in the USSR. Millions of Ukrainians were exterminated by targeted famine in the winter of 1932-1933.

Holodomor means “murder by hunger.”

Stalin’s politburo blacklisted farms and villages in Ukraine. Nobody was allowed to leave home to go looking for food. Anything that did grow on Ukrainian farms was taken away to feed Russians in distant cities. That winter, official raiding parties requisitioned anything edible from every farmhouse and village. Ukrainians died in droves in the countryside, and were buried in mass graves.

Five million people died of hunger in the USSR that year, about four million of whom were Ukrainians. The politburo suppressed the 1937 census figures for Ukraine to mask their actions, but counting back from subsequent population statistics, there is a horrendous hole in the Ukrainian population. The urban populations were shielded by rationing, controlled by ration cards. Corpses of the starved nevertheless appeared frequently on city pavements.

Secret police arrested and executed or imprisoned people indiscriminately. The gulags, Russian detention and labor camps that were run to control dissenters, filled up with Ukrainians. Friendly respect of Ukrainian culture came to a sudden halt, and Moscow reigned through raw terror. Officials ceased to even pretend to use Ukrainian, and if you wanted to survive, you made yourself sound very Russian in public.

During this winter, the USSR exported a million tons of wheat to the west.

However, neither Russia’s charm offensive nor genocide persuaded Ukrainians that they were suddenly ordinary Russian peasants. Ukrainians’ self belief proved invulnerable.