Editing Holodomor (section)

== History ==
=== Scope and duration ===
The famine affected the Ukrainian SSR as well as the [[Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic]] (a part of the [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic|Ukrainian SSR]] at the time) in spring 1932,{{sfn|Pyrih, 1990; No. 1-132.}} and from February to July 1933,{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2004|p=204}} with the most victims recorded in spring 1933. The consequences are evident in demographic statistics: between 1926 and 1939, the [[Demographics of Ukraine|Ukrainian population]] increased by only 6.6%, whereas Russia and Belarus grew by 16.9% and 11.7% respectively.{{sfn|USSR Census|1939}}{{sfn|Demoscope Weekly| 2012}} The number of [[Ukrainians|Ukrainians as ethnicity]] decreased by 10%.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-02-29 |title=Демоскоп Weekly - Приложение. Справочник статистических показателей. |url=https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/ussr_nac_26.php |access-date=2024-08-15 |archive-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240229113741/https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/ussr_nac_26.php |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-05-20 |title=Демоскоп Weekly - Приложение. Справочник статистических показателей. |url=https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/sng_nac_39.php |access-date=2024-08-15 |archive-date=20 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240520171244/https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/sng_nac_39.php |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref>

From the 1932 harvest, Soviet authorities were able to procure only 4.3 million tons of grain, as compared with 7.2 million tons obtained from the 1931 harvest.{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2004|pp=470, 476}} Rations in towns were drastically cut back, and in winter 1932–1933 and spring 1933, people in many urban areas starved.{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2004|p=xviii}} Urban workers were supplied by a [[rationing]] system and therefore could occasionally assist their starving relatives in the countryside, but rations were gradually cut. By spring 1933, urban residents also faced starvation. It is estimated 70% to 80% of all famine deaths during the Holodomor in eight analyzed Oblasts in the Soviet Union occurred in the first seven months of 1933.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}}

The first reports of mass [[malnutrition]] and deaths from starvation emerged from two urban areas of the city of [[Uman]], reported in January 1933 by [[Vinnytsia Oblast|Vinnytsia]] and [[Kyiv Oblast|Kyiv]] [[oblast]]s. By mid-January 1933, there were reports about mass "difficulties" with food in urban areas, which had been undersupplied through the rationing system, and deaths from starvation among people who were refused rations, according to the December 1932 decree of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party. By the beginning of February 1933, according to reports from local authorities and Ukrainian [[State Political Directorate|GPU]] (secret police), the most affected area was [[Dnipropetrovsk Oblast]], which also suffered from epidemics of [[typhus]] and [[malaria]]. [[Odesa Oblast|Odesa]] and Kyiv oblasts were second and third respectively. By mid-March, most of the reports of starvation originated from Kyiv Oblast.{{citation needed|date=July 2018}}

By mid-April 1933, [[Kharkiv Oblast]] reached the top of the most affected list, while Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Vinnytsia, and [[Donetsk Oblast|Donetsk]] oblasts, and Moldavian SSR were next on the list. Reports about mass deaths from starvation, dated mid-May through the beginning of June 1933, originated from [[raion]]s in Kyiv and Kharkiv oblasts. The "less affected" list noted [[Chernihiv Oblast]] and northern parts of Kyiv and Vinnytsia oblasts. The Central Committee of the CP(b) of Ukraine Decree of 8 February 1933 said no hunger cases should have remained untreated.{{sfn|Pyrih, 1990; No. 343-403.}} ''[[The Ukrainian Weekly]]'', which was tracking the situation in 1933, reported the difficulties in communications and the appalling situation in Ukraine.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Reisenauer |first1=Troy Philip |title=The Great Famine in Soviet Ukraine: Toward New Avenues of Inquiry into the Holodomor |url=https://library.ndsu.edu/ir/bitstream/handle/10365/27445/The%20Great%20Famine%20in%20Soviet%20Ukraine%20Toward%20New%20Avenues%20of%20Inquiry%20into%20the%20Holodomor.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |pages=26–28 |publisher=North Dakota State University |access-date=October 9, 2024 |date=2014}}</ref>

Local authorities had to submit reports about the numbers suffering from hunger, the reasons for hunger, number of deaths from hunger, food aid provided from local sources, and centrally provided food aid required. The GPU managed parallel reporting and food assistance in the Ukrainian SSR. Many regional reports and most of the central summary reports are available from present-day central and regional Ukrainian archives.{{sfn|Pyrih, 1990; No. 343-403.}}

=== Causes ===
{| class="wikitable floatright" style="margin:1em auto 1em 2em; text-align:right;"
 |+ Soviet grain collections and exports<br />''(in thousand tons)''{{sfn|Davies|Tauger|Wheatcroft|1995|p=645}}
!Year ending
!Collections
!Exports
|-
!June 1930
|16081
|1343
|-
!June 1931
|22139
|5832
|-
!June 1932
|22839
|4786
|-
!June 1933
|18513
|1607
|}
{{main|Causes of the Holodomor}}

Olga Andriewsky writes that scholars are in consensus that the [[Causes of the Holodomor|cause of the famine]] was man-made.<ref>{{harvnb|Andriewsky|2015|p=37}}: "Historians of Ukraine are no longer debating whether the Famine was the result of natural causes (and even then not exclusively by them). The academic debate appears to come down to the issue of intentions, to whether the special measures undertaken in Ukraine in the winter of 1932–33 that intensified starvation were aimed at Ukrainians as such."</ref> The term "man-made" is, however, questioned by historians such as [[R. W. Davies]] and [[Stephen Wheatcroft]], according to whom those who use this term "underestimate the role of{{nbsp}}... natural causes",<ref>{{cite book|last1=Davies |first1=Robert |author1-link=R. W. Davies |last2=Wheatcroft |first2=Stephen |author2-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft |date=2016|title=The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933|publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=9780230273979|quote=Western commentators and historians long debated whether the famine was man-made{{nbsp}}... Russian historians sometimes call the famine "rukotvornyi" – man-made {{nbsp}}... But in our opinion they and Conquest underestimate the role of climate and other natural causes.|page=xvi, xvii}}</ref> though they agree that the Holodomor was largely a result of Stalin's economic policies. Among contemporary historians it is debated whether the famine was an intended result of such policies,<ref>{{cite journal|journal=American Political Science Review|doi=10.1017/S0003055419000066|page=571 |title=Mass Repression and Political Loyalty: Evidence from Stalin's 'Terror by Hunger' |date=2019 |last1=Rozenas |first1=Arturas |last2=Zhukov |first2=Yuri M. |volume=113 |issue=2 |s2cid=143428346 |quote=Similar to famines in Ireland in 1846–1851 (Ó Gráda 2007) and China in 1959–1961 (Meng, Qian and Yared 2015), the politics behind Holodomor have been a focus of historiographic debate. The most common interpretation is that Holodomor was 'terror by hunger' (Conquest 1987, 224), 'state aggression' (Applebaum 2017) and 'clearly premeditated mass murder' (Snyder 2010, 42). Others view it as an unintended by-product of Stalin's economic policies (Kotkin 2017; Naumenko 2017), precipitated by natural factors like adverse weather and crop infestation (Davies and Wheatcroft 1996; Tauger 2001).}}</ref> whether the Holodomor was directed at Ukrainians, and whether it constitutes a [[genocide]], the point of contention being the absence of attested documents explicitly ordering the starvation of any area in the Soviet Union.{{Sfnm|1a1=Ellman|1y=2005|1p=824|2a1=Davies|2a2=Wheatcroft|2y=2006|2pp=628, 631}} Some historians conclude that the famine was deliberately engineered by [[Joseph Stalin]] to eliminate a [[Ukrainian independence]] movement.{{efn|name=Britannica "Holodomor"}} Others suggest that the famine was primarily the consequence of rapid [[History of the Soviet Union (1927–53)#Industrialization in practice|Soviet industrialisation]] and [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|collectivization]] of agriculture. A middle position, held for example by historian Andrea Graziosi, is that the initial causes of the famine were an unintentional byproduct of the process of collectivization but once it set in, starvation was selectively weaponized and the famine was "instrumentalized" and amplified against Ukrainians as a means to punish Ukrainians for resisting Soviet policies and to suppress their [[Ukrainian nationalism|nationalist sentiments]].{{sfn|Werth|2008}}

Some scholars suggest that the famine was a consequence of human-made and natural factors.{{sfn|Graziosi|2004}} The most prevalent man-made factor was changes made to agriculture because of rapid [[History of the Soviet Union (1927–53)#Industrialization in practice|industrialisation]] during the [[First five-year plan (Soviet Union)|First Five Year Plan]].{{sfn|Kulchytsky2007- Evidential Gaps}}{{sfn|Fawkes|2006}}{{sfn| Marples|2005}} There are also those who blame a systematic set of policies perpetrated by the Soviet government under [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] designed to exterminate the Ukrainians.{{efn|name=Britannica "Holodomor"}}{{sfn|Ellman|2005}}{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2002|p=77|loc= "[T]he drought of 1931 was particularly severe, and drought conditions continued in 1932. This certainly helped to worsen the conditions for obtaining the harvest in 1932"}}{{sfn|Engerman|2009|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=UkFlO7hoxOMC&pg=PA194 194]}}

==== Low harvest ====
According to historian [[Stephen G. Wheatcroft]], the grain yield for the Soviet Union preceding the famine was a low harvest of between 55 and 60 million tons,{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2004|pp=xix–xxi}} likely in part caused by damp weather and low traction power,{{sfn|Wheatcroft|2018}} yet official statistics mistakenly reported a yield of 68.9 million tons.{{sfn| Marples|2002}} (A single ton of grain is enough to provide a good bread ration containing {{circa|2350}} kCal per person for three people for one year.){{sfn|Davies|Tauger|Wheatcroft|1995|p=643}} Historian Mark Tauger has suggested that drought and damp weather were causes of the low harvest.{{sfn|Tauger|2001|p=45}} Mark Tauger suggested that heavy rains would help the harvest while Stephen Wheatcroft suggested it would hurt it which Natalya Naumenko notes as a disagreement in scholarship.{{sfn|Naumenko|2021}} Another factor which reduced the harvest suggested by Tauger included endemic plant rust.{{sfn|Tauger|2001|p=39}} However, in regard to plant disease Stephen Wheatcroft notes that the Soviet extension of sown area combined with lack of crop rotation may have exacerbated the problem,{{efn|name=Davies 2004, p. 437}} which Tauger also acknowledges in regard to the latter.<ref name="TaugerQianCritique" />

==== Collectivization, procurements, and the export of grain ====
{{see also|Collectivization in the Soviet Union|Five-year plans of the Soviet Union#First plan, 1928–1932|Causes of the Holodomor#Consequence of collectivization}}
[[File:15th anniversary of Holodomor - postcard.jpg|thumb|upright=0.85|Postcard commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Holodomor, which shows Stalin looking at his kolkhoz built on a pile of starved Ukrainians. Published in 1948 by the [[Ukrainian Youth Association]].]]

Due to factional struggles with [[Bukharin]] wing of the party, peasant resistance to the [[New Economic Policy|NEP]] under [[Lenin]], and the need for industrialization, [[Joseph Stalin]] declared a need to extract a "tribute" or "tax" from the peasantry.<ref name="collectivizationstruggle">{{cite book |last1=Viola |first1=Lynne |title=The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe:Comparison and Entanglements |date=2014 |publisher=[[Central European University Press]] |isbn=978-963-386-048-9 |chapter=Collectivization in the Soviet Union: Specificities and Modalities |pages=49–69}}</ref> This idea was supported by most of the party in the 1920s.<ref name="collectivizationstruggle" /> The tribute collected by the party took on the form of a virtual war against the peasantry that would lead to its [[cultural genocide|cultural destruction]] and the relegating of the countryside to essentially a [[colony]] homogenized to the urban culture of the Soviet elite.<ref name="collectivizationstruggle" /> [[Leon Trotsky]], however, opposed the policy of forced collectivisation under Stalin and would have favoured a [[volunteering|voluntary]], gradual approach towards [[collective farming]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Beilharz |first1=Peter |title=Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism |date=19 November 2019 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-000-70651-2 |pages=1–206 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Lfe-DwAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+widely+acknowledged+collectivisation&pg=PT196 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rubenstein |first1=Joshua |title=Leon Trotsky : a revolutionary's life |date=2011 |location=New Haven |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=978-0-300-13724-8 |page=161 |url=https://archive.org/details/leontrotskyrevol0000rube/page/160/mode/2up?q=forced+collectivization}}</ref> with greater tolerance for the rights of Soviet Ukrainians.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |author1-link=Isaac Deutscher |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=637 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |first=Leon |last=Trotsky |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=Problem of the Ukraine |date=April 1939 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> This campaign of "colonizing" the peasantry had its roots both in old [[Russian Imperialism]] and modern [[Social engineering (political science)|social engineering]] of the [[nation state]] yet with key differences to the latter such as Soviet repression reflecting more the weakness of said state rather than its strength.<ref name="collectivizationstruggle" />

In this vein by the summer of 1930, the government instituted a program of food requisitioning, ostensibly to increase grain exports. According to Natalya Naumenko, [[collectivization in the Soviet Union]] and lack of favored industries were primary contributors to famine mortality (52% of excess deaths), and some evidence shows there was discrimination against ethnic Ukrainians and Germans. In Ukraine [[Collectivization in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic|collectivisation policy]] was enforced, entailing extreme crisis and contributing to the famine. In 1929–1930, peasants were induced to transfer land and livestock to state-owned farms, on which they would work as day-labourers for payment in kind.{{sfn|Reid|2017}}

Food exports continued during the famine, albeit at a reduced rate.{{sfn|Applebaum|2017|pp=189–220; 221ff}} In regard to exports, [[Michael Ellman]] states that the 1932–1933 grain exports amounted to 1.8 million tonnes, which would have been enough to feed 5 million people for one year.{{sfn|Ellman|2007}} The collectivization and high procurement quota explanation for the famine is somewhat called into question by the fact that the oblasts of Ukraine with the highest losses were [[Kyiv]] and [[Kharkiv]], which produced far lower amounts of grain than other sections of the country.{{sfn|Selden|1982}}{{sfn|Chamberlin|1933}} Historian [[Stephen G. Wheatcroft]] lists four problems Soviet authorities ignored during collectivization that would hinder the advancement of agricultural technology and ultimately contributed to the famine:{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2004|pp=436–441}}

* "Over-extension of the sown area" — Crops yields were reduced and likely some plant disease caused by the planting of future harvests across a wider area of land without rejuvenating soil leading to the reduction of fallow land.
* "Decline in draught power" — the over extraction of grain led to the loss of food for farm animals, which in turn reduced the effectiveness of agricultural operations.
* "Quality of cultivation" — the planting and extracting of the harvest, along with ploughing was done in a poor manner due to inexperienced and demoralized workers and the aforementioned lack of draught power.
* "The poor weather" — drought and other poor weather conditions were largely ignored by Soviet authorities who gambled on good weather and believed agricultural difficulties would be overcome.

Mark Tauger notes that Soviet and Western specialist at the time noted draught power shortages and lack of crop rotation contributed to intense weed infestations,<ref name="TaugerQianCritique" /> with these both being also factors Stephen Wheatcroft lists as contributing to the famine. Natalya Naumenko calculated that reduced agriculture production in "collectivized" collective farms is responsible for up to 52% of Holodomor [[Excess mortality|excess deaths]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Wikipedia Library |url=https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/ |access-date=2024-07-17 |website=wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org |language=en |archive-date=9 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230909192849/https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

====Discrimination and persecution of Ukrainians ====
{{see also|Causes of the Holodomor#Soviet state policies that contributed to the Holodomor|Russification of Ukraine#Mid-1920s to early 1930s}}
{{quote box
| width = 30em
| author = — [[Arthur Koestler]], [[Hungarians in the United Kingdom|Hungarian-British]] journalist
| quote = At every [train] station there was a crowd of peasants in rags, offering icons and linen in exchange for a loaf of bread. The women were lifting up their infants to the compartment windows—infants pitiful and terrifying with limbs like sticks, puffed bellies, big cadaverous heads lolling on thin necks.
}}
It has been proposed that the Soviet leadership used the human-made famine to attack [[Ukrainian nationalism]], and thus it could fall under the legal definition of genocide.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Margolis|2003}}
| {{harvnb|Kulchytsky2007- Evidential Gaps}}
| {{harvnb|Finn|2008}}
| {{harvnb|Marples|2005}}
| {{harvnb|Bilinsky|1999}}
| {{harvnb|Kulchytsky|2006}}
}}</ref> For example, special and particularly lethal policies were adopted in and largely limited to Soviet Ukraine at the end of 1932 and 1933. According to [[Timothy D. Snyder|Timothy Snyder]], "each of them may seem like an [[anodyne]] administrative measure, and each of them was certainly presented as such at the time, and yet each had to kill."{{efn|name=note-anodyne}}{{sfn|Snyder|2010|pp=42–46}} Other sources discuss the famine in relation to a project of imperialism or colonialism of Ukraine by the Soviet state.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{cite journal |last1=Irvin-Erickson |first1=Douglas |title=Raphaël Lemkin, Genocide, Colonialism, Famine, and Ukraine |journal=Empire, Colonialism, and Famine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries |date=12 May 2021 |volume=8 |pages=193–215 |doi=10.21226/ewjus645 |s2cid=235586856 |doi-access=free}}
| {{cite journal |last1=Hechter |first1=Michael |title=Internal Colonialism, Alien Rule, and Famine in Ireland and Ukraine |journal=Empire, Colonialism, and Famine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries |date=12 May 2021 |volume=8 |pages=145–157 |doi=10.21226/ewjus642 |s2cid=235579661 |doi-access=free}}
| {{cite journal |last1=Hrynevych |first1=Liudmyla |title=Stalin's Faminogenic Policies in Ukraine: The Imperial Discourse |journal=Empire, Colonialism, and Famine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries |date=12 May 2021 |volume=8 |pages=99–143 |doi=10.21226/ewjus641 |s2cid=235570495 |doi-access=free}}
}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Klid |first1=Bohdan |title=Empire-Building, Imperial Policies, and Famine in Occupied Territories and Colonies |journal=Empire, Colonialism, and Famine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries |date=12 May 2021 |volume=8 |pages=11–32 |doi=10.21226/ewjus634 |s2cid=235578437 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

[[File:Famine en URSS 1933.jpg|thumb|upright=0.85|A map of the [[Soviet famine of 1932–1933]] with the areas of most disastrous famine shaded black]]
According to a [[Centre for Economic Policy Research]] paper published in 2021 by Andrei Markevich, Natalya Naumenko, and Nancy Qian, regions with higher Ukrainian population shares were struck harder with centrally planned policies corresponding to famine such as increased procurement rate,{{sfn|Qian|2021}} and Ukrainian populated areas were given lower numbers of tractors which the paper argues demonstrates that ethnic discrimination across the board was centrally planned, ultimately concluding that 92% of famine deaths in Ukraine alone along with 77% of famine deaths in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus combined can be explained by systematic bias against Ukrainians.{{sfn|Markevich|Naumenko|Qian|2021|loc=Abstract}} The paper found from its analysis that "the regime intended to take more grain from Ukrainian areas after conditioning for factors such as production capacity"{{sfn|Markevich|Naumenko|Qian|2021|p=27}} and noting that "in areas that the Bolshevik regime marked as important for grain production, ethnic Russians replaced ethnic Ukrainians as the largest ethnic group".{{sfn|Markevich|Naumenko|Qian|2021|p=31}}

Mark Tauger criticized Natalya Naumenko's work as being based on: "major historical inaccuracies and falsehoods, omissions of essential evidence contained in her sources or easily available, and substantial misunderstandings of certain key topics".<ref name="TaugerQianCritique">{{cite journal |last1=Tauger |first1=Mark B. |title=The Environmental Economy of the Soviet Famine in Ukraine in 1933: A Critique of Several Papers by Natalya Naumenko |journal=Econ Journal Watch |url=https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1286/TaugerSept2023.pdf?mimetype=pdf |access-date=16 October 2023 |archive-date=18 October 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231018075413/https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1286/TaugerSept2023.pdf?mimetype=pdf |url-status=live}}</ref> For example, Naumenko ignored Tauger's findings of 8.94 million tons of the harvest that had been lost to crop "rust and smut",<ref name="TaugerQianCritique" /> four reductions in grain procurement to Ukraine including a 39.5 million puds reduction in grain procurements ordered by Stalin,<ref name="TaugerQianCritique" /> and that from Tauger's findings which are contrary to Naumenko's paper's claims the "per-capita grain procurements in Ukraine were less, often significantly less, than the per-capita procurements from the five other main grain-producing regions in the USSR in 1932".<ref name="TaugerQianCritique" />

Other scholars argue that in other years preceding the famine this was not the case. For example, Stanislav Kulchytsky claims Ukraine produced more grain in 1930 than the [[Central Black Earth Oblast]], [[Middle Volga|Middle]] and [[Lower Volga]] and [[North Caucasus]] regions all together, which had never been done before, and on average gave 4.7 quintals of grain from every sown hectare to the state{{emdash}}a record-breaking index of marketability{{emdash}}but was unable to fulfill the grain quota for 1930 until May 1931. Ukraine produced a similar amount of grain in 1931; however, by the late spring of 1932 "many districts were left with no reserves of produce or fodder at all".<ref name="Kulchytskystalinslave" /> Despite this, according to statistics gathered by Nataliia Levchuk, Ukraine and North Caucasus Krai delivered almost 100% of their grain procurement in 1931 versus 67% in two Russian Oblasts during the same period versus 1932 where three Russian regions delivered almost all of their procurements and Ukraine and North Caucasus did not.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}} This can partially be explained by Ukrainian regions losing a third of their harvests and Russian regions losing by comparison only 15% of their harvest.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}}

Ultimately, Tauger states: "if the regime had not taken even that smaller amount grain from Ukrainian villages, the famine could have been greatly reduced or even eliminated" however (in his words) "if the regime had left that grain in Ukraine, then other parts of the USSR would have been even more deprived of food than they were, including Ukrainian cities and industrial sites, and the overall effect would still have been a major famine, even worse in "non-Ukrainian" regions."<ref name="TaugerQianCritique" /> In fact in contrast to Naumenko's paper's claims the higher Ukrainian collectivization rates in Tauger's opinion actually indicate a pro-Ukrainian bias in Soviet policies rather than an anti-Ukrainian one: "[Soviet authorities] did not see collectivization as "discrimination" against Ukrainians; they saw it as a reflection of—in the leaders' view—Ukraine's relatively more advanced farming skills that made Ukraine better prepared for collectivization (Davies 1980a, 166, 187–188; Tauger 2006a)."<ref name="TaugerQianCritique" />

Naumenko responded to some of Tauger's criticisms in another paper.<ref name="naumenkoresponse">{{cite journal |last1=Naumenko |first1=Natalya |title=Response to Professor Tauger's Comments |journal=Econ Journal Watch |date=September 2023 |page=313}}</ref> Naumenko criticizes Tauger's view of the efficacy of collective farms arguing Tauger's view goes against the consensus,<ref name="naumenkoresponse" /> she also states that the tenfold difference in death toll between the 1932-1933 Soviet famine and the [[Russian famine of 1891–1892]] can only be explained by government policies,<ref name="naumenkoresponse" /> and that the infestations of pests and plant disease suggested by Tauger as a cause of the famine must also correspond such infestations to rates of collectivization due to deaths by area corresponding to this<ref name="naumenkoresponse" /> due Naumenko's findings that: "on average, if you compare two regions with similar pre-famine characteristics, one with zero collectivization rate and another with a 100 percent collectivization rate, the more collectivized region's 1933 mortality rate increases by 58 per thousand relative to its 1927–1928 mortality rate".<ref name="naumenkoresponse" /> Naumenko believes the disagreement between her and Tauger is due to a "gulf in training and methods between quantitative fields like political science and economics and qualitative fields like history" noting that Tauger makes no comments on one of her paper's results section.<ref name="naumenkoresponse" />

Tauger made a counter-reply to this reply by Naumenko.<ref name="taugerresponseresponse">{{cite journal |title=Counter-Reply to Naumenko on the Soviet Famine in Ukraine in 1933 |first=Mark B. |last=Tauger |journal=Econ Journal Watch |date=March 2024 |volume=21 |number=1 |pages=79–91 |url=https://econjwatch.org/articles/counter-reply-to-naumenko-on-the-soviet-famine-in-ukraine-in-1933}}</ref> Tauger argues in his counter reply that Naumenko's attempt to correspond collectivization rates to famine mortality fails because "there was no single level of collectivization anywhere in the USSR in 1930, especially in the Ukrainian Republic" and that "since collectivization changed significantly by 1932–1933, any connection between 1930 and 1933 omits those changes and is therefore invalid".<ref name="taugerresponseresponse" /> Tauger also criticizes Naumenko's ignoring of statistics Tauger's presented where "in her reply she completely ignored the quantitative data [Tauger] presented in [his] article" in which she against the evidence "denied that any famines took place in the later 1920s".<ref name="taugerresponseresponse" /> To counter Naumenko's claim that collectivization explains the famine Tauger argues ( in his words) how agro-environmental disasters better explain the regional discrepancies: "[Naumenko's] calculations again omit any consideration of the agro-environmental disasters that harmed farm production in 1932. In her appendices, Table C3, she does the same calculation with collectivization data from 1932, which she argues shows a closer correlation between collectivization and famine mortality (Naumenko 2021b, 33). Yet, as I showed, those agroenvironmental disasters were much worse in the regions with higher collectivization—especially Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and the Volga River basin (and also in Kazakhstan)—than elsewhere in the USSR. As I documented in my article and other publications, these were regions that had a history of environmental disasters that caused crop failures and famines repeatedly in Russian history."<ref name="taugerresponseresponse" /> Tauger notes: "[Naumenko's] assumption that collectivization subjected peasants to higher procurements, but in 1932 in Ukraine this was clearly not the case" as "grain procurements both total and per-capita were much lower in Ukraine than anywhere else in the USSR in 1932".<ref name="taugerresponseresponse" />

==== Peasant resistance ====
{{Holodomor}}{{genocide}}
{{history of Ukraine}}
[[Collectivization in the Soviet Union]], including the Ukrainian SSR, was not popular among the peasantry, and forced collectivisation led to numerous [[List of peasant revolts|peasant revolts]]. The [[Joint State Political Directorate|OGPU]] recorded 932 disturbances in Ukraine, 173 in the North Caucasus, and only 43 in the Central Black Earth Oblast (out of 1,630 total). Reports two years prior recorded over 4,000 unrests in Ukraine, while in other agricultural regions - Central Black Earth, Middle Volga, Lower Volga, and North Caucasus - the numbers were sightly above 1,000. OGPU's summaries also cited public proclamations of Ukrainian insurgents to restore the [[Ukrainian People's Republic|independence of Ukraine]], while reports by the Ukrainian officials included information about the declining popularity and authority of the party among peasants.<ref name="Kulchytskystalinslave">{{harvnb|Kulchytsky|2017}}; {{harvnb|Kulchytsky|2020}}; {{harvnb|Kulchytsky|2008}}</ref> Oleh Wolowyna comments that peasant resistance and the ensuing repression of said resistance was a critical factor for the famine in Ukraine and parts of Russia populated by national minorities like Germans and Ukrainians allegedly tainted by "fascism and bourgeois nationalism" according to Soviet authorities.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}}

=== Regional variation ===
The collectivization and high procurement quota explanation for the famine is called into question by the fact that the oblasts of Ukraine with the highest losses were [[Kyiv]] and [[Kharkiv]], which produced far lower amounts of grain than other sections of the country.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}} A potential explanation for this was that Kharkiv and Kyiv fulfilled and over fulfilled their grain procurements in 1930 which led to [[raion]]s in these oblasts having their procurement quotas doubled in 1931 compared to the national average increase in procurement rate of 9%. While Kharkiv and Kyiv had their quotas increased, the Odesa oblast and some raions of Dnipropetrovsk oblast had their procurement quotas decreased.{{sfn|Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute|2022}}

According to Nataliia Levchuk of the Ptoukha Institute of Demography and Social Studies, "the distribution of the largely increased 1931 grain quotas in Kharkiv and Kyiv oblasts by raion was very uneven and unjustified because it was done disproportionally to the percentage of wheat sown area and their potential grain capacity."{{sfn|Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute|2022}}
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+ Famine losses by region{{sfn|Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute|2018}}
|-
! Oblast !! Total Deaths (1932–1934 in thousands) !! Deaths per 1000 (1932) !! Deaths per 1000 (1933) !! Deaths per 1000 (1934)
|-
| [[Kyiv Oblast]] || 1,110.8 || 13.7 || 178.7 || 7
|-
| [[Kharkiv Oblast]] || 1,037.6 || 7.8 || 178.9 || 4.2
|-
| [[Vinnytsia Oblast]] || 545.5 || 5.9 || 114.6 || 5.2
|-
| [[Dnipropetrovsk Oblast]] || 368.4 || 5.4 || 91.6 || 4.7
|-
| [[Odesa Oblast]] || 326.9 || 6.1 || 98.8 || 2.4
|-
| [[Chernihiv Oblast]] || 254.2 || 6 || 75.7 || 11.9
|-
| [[Stalino Oblast]] || 230.8 || 7 || 41.1 || 6.4
|-
| [[Tyraspol]] || 68.3 || 9.6 || 102.4 || 8.1
|}

=== Repressive policies ===
[[File:Blackboard - punishment of kolhoz during Holodomor in Ukraine.png|thumb|A "black board" published in the newspaper "Under the Flag of Lenin" in January 1933—a "blacklist" identifying specific [[kolhoz]]es and their punishment in the [[Bashtanka Raion]], [[Mykolaiv Oblast]], Ukraine.]]
Several repressive policies were implemented in Ukraine immediately preceding, during, and proceeding the famine, including but not limited to cultural-religious persecution the [[Law of Spikelets]], [[Blacklisting (Soviet policy)|Blacklisting]], [[Passport system in the Soviet Union#1932–1991|the internal passport system]], and harsh grain requisitions.

==== Preceding the famine ====
{{see also|Union for the Freedom of Ukraine process}}
Coiner of the term [[genocide]], [[Raphael Lemkin]] considered the repression of the Orthodox Church to be a prong of [[genocide]] against Ukrainians when seen in correlation to the Holodomor famine.{{sfn|Serbyn|2015}} Collectivization did not just entail the acquisition of land from farmers but also the closing of churches, burning of icons, and the arrests of priests.{{sfn|Fitzpatrick|1994|p=6}} Associating the church with the tsarist regime,{{sfn|Fitzpatrick|1994|p=33}} the Soviet state continued to undermine the church through expropriations and repression.{{sfn|Viola|1999}} They cut off state financial support to the church and secularized church schools.{{sfn|Fitzpatrick|1994|p=33}}

By early 1930 75% of the Autocephalist [[parishes]] in Ukraine were persecuted by Soviet authorities.{{sfn|Bociurkiw|1982}} The GPU instigated a show trial which denounced the Orthodox Church in Ukraine as a "nationalist, political, counter-revolutionary organization" and instigated a staged "self-dissolution."{{sfn|Bociurkiw|1982}} However the Church was later allowed to reorganize in December 1930 under a pro-Soviet cosmopolitan leader of [[Ivan Pavlovsky]] yet purges of the Church reignited during the [[Great Purge]].{{sfn |Bociurkiw|1982}} Changes in cultural politics also occurred.

First soviet [[show trial]] in Ukraine in connection to the member of the [[Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party]] has taken place as early as 1921.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Процес цк української партії соціалістів-революціонерів 1921 |trans-title=The trial of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries in 1921 |url=http://resource.history.org.ua/cgi-bin/eiu/history.exe?&I21DBN=EIU&P21DBN=EIU&S21STN=1&S21REF=10&S21FMT=eiu_all&C21COM=S&S21CNR=20&S21P01=0&S21P02=0&S21P03=TRN=&S21COLORTERMS=0&S21STR=Protses_TsK_1921 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240602095135/http://resource.history.org.ua/cgi-bin/eiu/history.exe?&I21DBN=EIU&P21DBN=EIU&S21STN=1&S21REF=10&S21FMT=eiu_all&C21COM=S&S21CNR=20&S21P01=0&S21P02=0&S21P03=TRN=&S21COLORTERMS=0&S21STR=Protses_TsK_1921 |archive-date=2 June 2024 |access-date=2 June 2024 |website=resource.history.org.ua}}</ref> Yet, the first show trial related to Ukraine in the period of the [[First five-year plan (Soviet Union)|First five-year plan]] was a trial in 1928 in [[North Caucasus Krai]], known as [[Shakhty Trial]].<ref>{{Cite web |author=Ukrainian Institute of National Memory |author-link=Ukrainian Institute of National Memory |script-title=uk:1928 - почався суд по "шахтинській справі" |title=1928 - pochavsya sud po "shakhtynsʹkiy spravi" |trans-title=1928 - the trial of the "Shakhtyn case" began |url=https://uinp.gov.ua/istorychnyy-kalendar/traven/18/1928-pochavsya-sud-po-shahtynskiy-spravi |access-date=2 June 2024 |website=УІНП |language=uk |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220306060857/https://uinp.gov.ua/istorychnyy-kalendar/traven/18/1928-pochavsya-sud-po-shahtynskiy-spravi |archive-date=6 March 2022}}</ref> Prior to this in October 1925 Shakhty [[Okrug]] (previously part of [[Donets Governorate]]) was transferred from [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic|Ukrainian SSR]] to [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|RSFSR]]<ref>{{Cite web |script-title=ru:Постановление Президиума ЦИК СССР от 16.10.1925 «Об урегулировании границ Украинской Социалистической Советской Республики с Российской Социалистической Федеративной Советской Республикой и Белорусской Социалистической Советской Республикой». |title=Postanovleniye Prezidiuma TSIK SSSR ot 16.10.1925 «Ob uregulirovanii granits Ukrainskoy Sotsialisticheskoy Sovetskoy Respubliki s Rossiyskoy Sotsialisticheskoy Federativnoy Sovetskoy Respublikoy i Belorusskoy Sotsialisticheskoy Sovetskoy Respublikoy». |language=ru |trans-title=Resolution of the Presidium of the CEC of the USSR of 16.10.1925 "On the settlement of the borders of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic with the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic and the Byelorussian Socialist Soviet Republic". |url=https://www.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online.cgi?req=doc;base=ESU;n=16497#OR9hWEUG66RY930K1 |access-date=2 June 2024}}</ref> and thus the trial was held in Moscow.Yet, one of the central ones, was the [[Union for the Freedom of Ukraine process|"Union for the Freedom of Ukraine" Trial]] in which 45 intellectuals, higher education professors, writers, a theologian and a priest were publicly prosecuted in [[Kharkiv]], then capital of Soviet Ukraine. Fifteen of the accused were executed, and 248 with links to the defendants were sent to the camps. [[Ukrainian Youth Association]] was also considered a "sub-division" of the "Union for Freedom of Ukraine" and thus its members were also trialed.<ref>{{Cite web |date=3 April 2017 |script-title=uk:"Монстр-процес": харківська справа "Спілки Визволення України" 1930 р. у громадсько-політичній думці Галичини |title="Monstr-protses": kharkivsʹka sprava "Spilky Vyzvolennya Ukrayiny" 1930 r. u hromadsʹko-politychniy dumtsi Halychyny |trans-title=The "Monster Trial": The Kharkiv Case of the "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine" in 1930 in the Public and Political Thought of Galicia |url=https://uamoderna.com/md/kravets-kharkiv-svu-1930/ |access-date=2 June 2024 |website=Україна Модерна |language=uk |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240602141027/https://uamoderna.com/md/kravets-kharkiv-svu-1930/ |archive-date=2 June 2024}}</ref> Other notable Ukrainian processes included "People's Revolutionary Socialist Party" trial in 1930 (it was claimed that this was an illegal armed insurgent organisation created in December 1929, which existed in [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic|Ukraine]] and [[Chechnya and Ingushetia in the Soviet Union|Chechnya]])<ref>{{Cite web |last=Shapoval |first=Yurii |script-title=uk:Народної революційної соціалістичної партії Справа |title=Narodnoyi revolyutsiynoyi sotsialistychnoyi partiyi Sprava |trans-title=Case of "People's Revolutionary Socialist Party" |url=https://esu.com.ua/article-71165 |access-date=2 June 2024 |website=Енциклопедія Сучасної України |date=12 December 2020 |language=uk |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240602075134/https://esu.com.ua/article-71165 |archive-date=2 June 2024}}</ref> and "Ukrainian National Center" trial in 1931 (another non-existent counter-revolutionary organisation).<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Prystajko |first1=Volodymyr I. |title=Mychajlo Hruševs'kyj: sprava "UNC" i ostanni roky (1931-1934) = Paralleltit. Mykhailo Hrushevsky |last2=Šapoval |first2=Jurij I. |date=1999 |publisher=Krytyka |isbn=978-966-7679-08-8 |location=Kyïv}}</ref> In [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|RSFSR]] at that time some other [[show trial]]s such as Industrial Party Trial (1930) and the [[1931 Menshevik Trial]] were held. The total number is not known,{{sfn|Wheatcroft|2001}}{{sfn|Leonavičius|Ozolinčiūtė|2019}} but tens of thousands{{efn|name=Werth, 2008.}} of people are estimated to have been arrested, exiled, and/or executed during and after the trial including 30,000{{sfn|Malko|2021|p=191}} intellectuals, writers, teachers, and scientists.

==== During the famine ====
The "Decree About the Protection of Socialist Property", nicknamed by the farmers the [[Law of Spikelets]], was enacted on 7 August 1932. The purpose of the law was to protect the property of the [[kolkhoz]] collective farms. It was nicknamed the Law of Spikelets because it allowed people to be prosecuted for [[gleaning]] leftover grain from the fields. There were more than 200,000 people sentenced under this law.{{sfn|Ellman|2007}}

[[Stalin]] wrote a letter to [[Lazar Kaganovich]] on 11 September 1932, shortly before Kaganovich and [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] were appointed heads of special commissions to oversee the grain procurements in Ukraine and Kuban (a region populated primarily by ethnic Ukrainians at the time), in which Stalin urged Kaganovich to force Ukraine into absolute compliance:

{{Blockquote|The main thing is now Ukraine. Matters in Ukraine are now extremely bad. Bad from the standpoint of the Party line. They say that there are two oblasts of Ukraine (Kyiv and Dnipropetrovs'k, it seems) where almost 50 raikomy [district Party committees] have come out against the plan of grain procurements, considering them unrealistic. In other [[raikom]]y, they confirm, the matter is no better. What does this look like? This is no party, but a parliament, a caricature of a parliament. Instead of directing the districts, [[Stanislav Kosior|Kosior]] is always waffling between the directives of the [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|CC VKP(b)]] and the demands of the district Party committees and waffled to the end. Lenin was right, when he said that a person who lacks the courage at the necessary moment to go against the current cannot be a real Bolshevik leader. Bad from the standpoint of the Soviet [state] line. [[Vlas Chubar|Chubar]] is no leader. Bad from the standpoint of the [[State Political Directorate|GPU]]. [[Stanislav Redens|Redens]] lacks the energy to direct the struggle with the counterrevolution in such a big and unique republic as Ukraine. If we do not now correct the situation in Ukraine, we could lose Ukraine. Consider that [[Józef Piłsudski|Piłsudski]] is not daydreaming, and his agents in Ukraine are much stronger than Redens or Kosior imagine. Also consider that within the Ukrainian Communist Party (500,000 members, ha, ha) there are not a few (yes, not a few!) rotten elements that are conscious or unconscious [[Symon Petliura|Petliura]] adherents and in the final analysis agents of Pilsudski. If the situation gets any worse, these elements won't hesitate to open a front within (and outside) the Party, against the Party. Worst of all, the Ukrainian leadership doesn't see these dangers.... Set yourself the task of turning Ukraine in the shortest possible time into a fortress of the USSR, into the most inalienable republic. Don't worry about money for this purpose.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://shron1.chtyvo.org.ua/James_Mace/Is_the_Ukrainian_Genocide_a_Myth_anhl.pdf?PHPSESSID=ho2l7bb4c2gmor9b9j4qhetpi7 |title=Is the Ukrainian Genocide a Myth? |first=James E. |last=Mace |author-link=James E. Mace |journal=Canadian-American Slavic Studies |volume=376 |number=3 |date=Fall 2003 |pages=45–52 |doi=10.1163/221023903X00378 |access-date=25 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230325182725/https://shron1.chtyvo.org.ua/James_Mace/Is_the_Ukrainian_Genocide_a_Myth_anhl.pdf?PHPSESSID=ho2l7bb4c2gmor9b9j4qhetpi7 |archive-date=25 March 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref>}}

The blacklist system was formalized in 1932 by the 20 November decree "The Struggle against Kurkul Influence in Collective Farms";{{sfn|Andriewsky|2015}} blacklisting, synonymous with a board of infamy, was one of the elements of agitation-propaganda in the [[Soviet Union]], and especially Ukraine and the ethnically Ukrainian [[Kuban]] region in the 1930s. A blacklisted collective farm, village, or [[raion]] (district) had its monetary loans and grain advances called in, stores closed, grain supplies, livestock, and food confiscated as a penalty, and was cut off from trade. Its Communist Party and collective farm committees were purged and subject to arrest, and their territory was forcibly cordoned off by the [[Joint State Political Directorate|OGPU]] secret police.{{sfn|Andriewsky|2015}}

Although nominally targeting collective farms failing to meet grain quotas and independent farmers with outstanding tax-in-kind, in practice the punishment was applied to all residents of affected villages and raions, including teachers, tradespeople, and children.{{sfn|Andriewsky|2015}} In the end 37 out of 392 districts{{sfn|Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute|2013}} along with at least 400 collective farms where put on the "black board" in Ukraine, more than half of the blacklisted farms being in [[Dnipropetrovsk Oblast]] alone.{{sfn|Papakin|2010}} Every single raion in Dnipropetrovsk had at least one blacklisted village, and in Vinnytsia oblast five entire raions were blacklisted.{{sfn|Andriewsky|2015}} This oblast is situated right in the middle of traditional lands of the [[Zaporizhian Cossacks]]. Cossack villages were also blacklisted in the Volga and Kuban regions of Russia.{{sfn|Andriewsky|2015}} Some blacklisted areas{{sfn|Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute|2013}} in [[Kharkiv]] could have death rates exceeding 40%{{sfn|Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute|2018}} while in other areas such as [[Vinnytsia Oblast|Vinnytsia]] blacklisting had no particular effect on mortality.{{sfn|Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute|2018}}

The [[passport system in the Soviet Union]] (identity cards) was introduced on 27 December 1932 to deal with the exodus of peasants from the countryside. Individuals not having such a document could not leave their homes on pain of administrative penalties, such as internment in [[labour camp]]s ([[Gulag]]). On 22 January 1933, [[Joseph Stalin]] signed a secret decree restricting travel by peasants after requests for bread began in the Kuban and Ukraine. Soviet authorities blamed the exodus of peasants during the famine on anti-Soviet elements, saying that "like the outflow from Ukraine last year, was organized by the enemies of Soviet power."{{efn|name=Martin 2001, pp. 306-307.}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pyrih |first=Ruslan I͡a. |url=http://history.org.ua/LiberUA/978-966-518-419-5/978-966-518-419-5.pdf |script-title=uk:1932–1933 років в Ukraïni: Документи і матеріали |title=1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraïni: Dokumenty i materialy |publisher=[[Kyiv-Mohyla Academy]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-966-518-419-5 |editor-last= |editor-first= |location=Kyiv |pages=609–10 |trans-title=Holodomor of 1932–33 in Ukraine: Documents and Materials |access-date=2 October 2023 |archive-date=1 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211101194242/http://history.org.ua/LiberUA/978-966-518-419-5/978-966-518-419-5.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref>

There was a wave of migration due to starvation and authorities responded by introducing a requirement that passports be used to go between republics and banning travel by rail.{{sfn|Tauger|1991}} During March 1933 [[State Political Directorate|GPU]] reported that 219,460 people were either intercepted and escorted back or arrested at its checkpoints meant to prevent movement of peasants between districts.{{sfn|Werth|1999|p=164}} It has been estimated that there were some 150,000 excess deaths as a result of this policy, and one historian asserts that these deaths constitute a [[crime against humanity]].{{sfn|Ellman|2007}} In contrast, historian [[Stephen Kotkin]] argues that the sealing of the Ukrainian borders caused by the internal passport system was in order to prevent the spread of famine-related diseases.{{sfn|Kotkin|2017}}

[[File:HolodomorVyizdValky.jpg|thumb|A "Red Train" of carts from the "Wave of Proletarian Revolution" collective farm in the village of Oleksiyivka, Kharkiv oblast in 1932. "Red Trains" took the first harvest of the season's crop to the government depots. During the Holodomor, these brigades were part of the Soviet Government's policy of taking away food from the peasants.]]

Between January and mid-April 1933, a factor contributing to a surge of deaths within certain regions of Ukraine during the period was the relentless search for alleged hidden grain by the confiscation of all food stuffs from certain households, which Stalin implicitly approved of through a telegram he sent on 1 January 1933 to the Ukrainian government reminding Ukrainian farmers of the severe penalties for not surrendering grain they may be hiding.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}}

On the other hand, considerable grain reserves were held back by the Soviet government. By 1 July 1933, around 1,141,000 tons of grain were kept in partially secret reserves which the government did not want to touch. Stephen Wheatcroft, Mark Tauger, and R.W. Davies conclude: "it seems certain that, if Stalin had risked lower levels of these reserves in spring and summer 1933, hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of lives could have been saved".{{sfn|Davies|Tauger|Wheatcroft|1995|pp=656–657}}

In order to make up for unfulfilled grain procurement quotas in Ukraine, reserves of grain were confiscated from three sources including, according to Oleh Wolowyna, "(a) grain set side for seed for the next harvest; (b) a grain fund for emergencies; (c) grain issued to collective farmers for previously completed work, which had to be returned if the collective farm did not fulfill its quota."{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}}

==== Near the end of and after the famine ====
In Ukraine, there was a widespread purge of Communist party officials at all levels. According to Oleh Wolowyna, 390 "anti-Soviet, counter-revolutionary insurgent and chauvinist" groups were eliminated resulting in 37,797 arrests, that led to 719 executions, 8,003 people being sent to [[Gulag]] camps, and 2,728 being put into internal exile.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}} 120,000 individuals in Ukraine were reviewed in the first 10 months of 1933 in a top-to-bottom purge of the Communist party resulting in 23% being eliminated as perceived class hostile elements.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}} [[Pavel Postyshev]] was set in charge of placing people at the head of Machine-Tractor Stations in Ukraine which were responsible for purging elements deemed to be class hostile.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}} The secretary of the Kharkiv Oblast referred to "bourgeois-nationalistic rabble" as "class enemies" even near the end of the famine.{{sfn|Kharkiv Oblast secretary |1933}} By the end of 1933, 60% of the heads of village councils and raion committees in Ukraine were replaced with an additional 40,000 lower-tier workers being purged.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}}

[[Bandura]] is a traditional Ukrainian musical instrument, whereas [[bandurist]]s were the carriers of traditional songs and folklore. One of the communist newspapers in 1930 already stated that "being in love with nationalist romance is not a communist thing" and in December 1933 during the All-Ukrainian Union of Art Workers, the [[bandura]] and [[kobza]] were declared class-enemy instruments,<ref>{{Cite web |title="Класово ворожа" бандура: пам'яті розстріляних кобзарів |trans-title=The "Class-Hostile" Bandura: In Memory of Executed Kobzars |url=https://umoloda.kyiv.ua/number/3248/196/118497/fb |access-date=2024-05-19 |website=umoloda.kyiv.ua |language=uk}}</ref> which lead to the beginning of the repressions against the musicians playing them.

Despite the crisis, the Soviet government refused to ask for foreign aid for the famine and persistently denied the famine's existence.{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2004|pp=441}} What aid was given was selectively distributed to preserve the collective farm system. Grain producing oblasts in Ukraine such as [[Dnipropetrovsk]] were given more aid at an earlier time than more severely affected regions like [[Kharkiv]] which produced less grain.{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}} [[Joseph Stalin]] had quoted [[Vladimir Lenin]] during the famine declaring: "[[He who does not work, neither shall he eat]]."{{sfn|Ellman|2007}}

This perspective is argued by [[Michael Ellman]] to have influenced official policy during the famine, with those deemed to be idlers being disfavored in aid distribution as compared to those deemed "conscientiously working collective farmers".{{sfn|Ellman|2007}} In this vein, Olga Andriewsky states that Soviet archives indicate that the most productive workers were prioritized for receiving food aid.{{efn|name=Andriewsky 2015, p. 17}}

Food rationing in Ukraine was determined by city categories (where one lived, with capitals and industrial centers being given preferential distribution), occupational categories (with industrial and railroad workers being prioritized over blue collar workers and intelligentsia), status in the family unit (with employed persons being entitled to higher rations than dependents and the elderly), and type of workplace in relation to industrialization (with those who worked in industrial endeavors near steel mills being preferred in distribution over those who worked in rural areas or in food).{{sfn|Malko|2021|pp=152–153}}  According to  [[James Abbe]], who visited Ukraine at that time, while the Soviet government insisted on him as well as other foreigners to sign an affidavit stating that "they had seen no forced labor in the Ukraine",<ref>{{Cite book |last=James E. Abbe |url=http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.89358 |title=I Photograph Russia |date=1934 |pages=304}}</ref> "only the actual industrial workers had received enough to eat and even their families had suffered".<ref>{{Cite book |last=James E. Abbe |url=http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.89358 |title=I Photograph Russia |date=1934 |pages=106}}</ref> Describing the coal mines he visited in Donetsk region, [[James Abbe]] mentions: "The next day we went into the question of forced labor. Of course, the armed soldiers situated in the mine shafts, power houses and tipples had bayonets fastened to their rifles and revolvers strapped to their belts; but they were doubtless guarding the property — though the superintendent failed to tell us what they were guarding the mines against. Anyhow, the system of issuing and revoking food cards is far more sinister and effective than bayonets".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Abbe |first=James E. |url=http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.89358 |title=I Photograph Russia |date=1934 |pages=314}}</ref>

There was also migration in to Ukraine as a response to the famine: in response to the demographic collapse, the Soviet authorities ordered large-scale resettlements, with over 117,000 peasants from remote regions of the Soviet Union taking over the deserted farms.{{sfn|Kuśnierz|2013}}{{sfn|Kuśnierz|2018}} Areas depopulated by the famine were resettled by Russians in the [[Zaporizhzhia Oblast|Zaporizhzhia]], Donetsk and [[Luhansk Oblast|Luhansk]] oblasts, but not as much so in central Ukraine. In some areas where depopulation was due to migration rather than mortality, Ukrainians returned to their places of residence to find their homes occupied by Russians, leading to widespread fights between Ukrainian farmers and Russian settlers. Such clashes caused around one million Russian settlers to be returned home.{{sfn|Nalyvayko|Bulanenko|2016}}

=== Torgsin system ===
[[Torgsin]] networks appeared in 1931.They were selling goods for foreign currency or exchanging them for precious metals. Originally only exclusively for foreigners, but later soviet citizens were also allowed to exchange the goods. During Holodomor people brought family heritage - crosses, earrings, wedding rings to Torgsins and exchanged it for special stamps, for which they could obtain basic goods - mostly flour, cereals or sugar. Torgsins operated at highly speculative prices and were known for long queues. With that mechanism authorities were able to extort from the population whatever could have been hidden during the confiscations. Many families survived, in particular thanks to Torgsin.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The book "Gold - the state! Torgsin in Soviet Ukraine, 1931–1936» – Чернігівський історичний музей ім. VV. Tarnovsky |url=https://choim.org/%d0%ba%d0%bd%d0%b8%d0%b3%d0%b0-%d0%b7%d0%be%d0%bb%d0%be%d1%82%d0%be-%d0%b4%d0%b5%d1%80%d0%b6%d0%b0%d0%b2%d1%96-%d1%82%d0%be%d1%80%d0%b3%d1%81%d0%b8%d0%bd-%d1%83-%d1%80%d0%b0%d0%b4/?lang=en |access-date=2024-05-19 |language=en}}</ref> Yet the network was also a cause of a psychological trauma,<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=The Holodomor and Torgsin System. Totally Secret |url=https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/film/holodomor-ta-systema-torhsin-tsilkom-taiemno-2/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |website=National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide |language=en}}</ref> since people had to give up on family valuables and relics that had not only material, but also spiritual value. During the Holodomor, the network of torgsins expanded considerably—by the end of 1933, there were already about 300 such shops in Soviet Ukraine.<ref name=":0" /> In 1933, the population brought 45 tons of pure gold to torgsins. The network existed until 1936.

=== Cannibalism ===
Evidence of widespread [[human cannibalism|cannibalism]] was documented during the Holodomor:{{sfn|Margolis|2003}}{{sfn|Sokur|2008}}
<blockquote>Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was "not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you." The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to [[Prostitution|prostitute]] themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat [[cadaver|corpses]] died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. Parents who resisted cannibalism died before their children did.... At least 2,505 people were sentenced for cannibalism in the years 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, though the actual number of cases was certainly much higher.{{sfn|Snyder|2010|pp=50–51}}</blockquote>

Most cases of cannibalism were "necrophagy, the consumption of corpses of people who had died of starvation". But the murder of children for food was common as well. Many survivors told of neighbors who had killed and eaten their own children. One woman, asked why she had done this, "answered that her children would not survive anyway, but this way she would". She was arrested by the police. The police also documented cases of children being kidnapped, killed, and eaten, and "stories of children being hunted down as food" circulated in many areas.{{sfn|Applebaum|2017|loc=chapter 11}} When nearly all grain and all kinds of animal meat had been exhausted, "a black market arose in human flesh" and it "may even have entered the official economy." The police kept a close eye on butcher shops and slaughterhouses, trying to prevent them from bringing human flesh into circulation.{{sfn|Snyder|2010|p=51}} The Italian consul, Sergio Gradenigo, nevertheless reported from Kharkiv that the "trade of human meat becomes more active."<ref>Quoted in {{harvnb|Applebaum|2017|loc=chapter 11}}.</ref>

In March 1933, the [[Joint State Political Directorate|secret police]] in [[Kyiv Oblast|Kyiv province]] collected "ten or more reports of cannibalism every day" but concluded that "in reality there are many more such incidents", most of which went unreported. Those found guilty of cannibalism were often "imprisoned, executed, or lynched". But while the authorities were well informed about the extent of cannibalism, they also tried to suppress this information from becoming widely known, the chief of the secret police warning "that written notes on the subject do not circulate among the officials where they might cause rumours".{{sfn|Applebaum|2017|loc=chapter 11}}
And the information secretly collected failed to spur the Soviet government into action. Various reports of the horrors of the famine, including the cannibalism, were sent to Moscow, where they were apparently shelved and ignored.{{sfn|Applebaum|2017|loc=chapter 11}}

=== Ukrainians in other republics ===
Ukrainians in other parts of the Soviet Union also experienced famine and repressive policies. Rural districts with Ukrainian populations in parts of the Soviet Union outside of Ukraine had higher mortality rates in Russia and Belarus than other districts, this discrepancy did not however apply to urban Ukrainians in these areas.{{sfn|Meier|2022}} This is sometimes viewed as being connected to the Holodomor in Ukraine.<ref>Naimark, Norman M. (2010). Stalin's Genocides. Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity. Vol. 12. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14784-0 p. 70</ref>

==== Kuban and the North Caucasus of Russia ====
In 1932–1933, the policies of forced collectivization of the Ukrainian population of the Soviet Union, which caused a devastating famine that greatly affected the Ukrainian population of the Kuban. The number of documented victims of famine in Kuban was at least 62,000. According to other historians, the real death toll is many times higher.{{sfn|Osadchenko|Rudneva|2012}} Brain Boeck thinks the figure more in the "hundreds of thousands".<ref name="boeckbrian"/> One source estimate that during the [[Soviet famine of 1932–1933]] Krasnodar lost over 14% of its population.{{sfn|Leonavičius|Ozolinčiūtė|2019}}{{sfn|Wolowyna|2021}} Purges were also extensive in the region. 358 of 716 party secretaries in Kuban were removed, along with 43% of the 25,000 party members there; in total, 40% of the 115,000 to 120,000 rural party members in the North Caucasus were removed.{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2004|p=178}} Party officials associated with [[Ukrainization]] were targeted, as the national policy was viewed to be connected with the failure of grain procurement by Soviet authorities.{{efn|name=Davies 2004, p. 190}} In this vein the Kuban corresponding to the famine had a reversal of the previously attempted policy of Ukrainisation. Prior to the reversal of Ukrainianization, the policy was failing in the Kuban with most local districts not completing it partially due to opposition by local Cossack nationalists and Russian chauvinists in the Kuban including by sabotage despite punitive threats from the state to complete the process made in May 1932.<ref name="boeckbrian"/>

The large Cossack stanitsa Poltavskaia sabotaged and resisted collectivization more than any other area in the Kuban which was perceived by [[Lazar Kaganovich]] to be connected to Ukrainian nationalist and Cossack conspiracy.<ref name="boeckbrian"/> Kaganovich relentlessly pursued the policy of requisition of grain in Poltavskaia and the rest of the Kuban and personally oversaw the purging of local leaders and Cossacks. Kaganovich viewed the resistance of Poltavskaia through Ukrainian lens delivering oration in a mixed Ukrainian language. To justify this Kaganovich cited a letter allegedly written by a stanitsa ataman named Grigorii Omel'chenko advocating Cossack separatism and local reports of resistance to collectivization in association with this figure to substantiate this suspicion of the area.<ref name="boeckbrian"/> However Kaganocvich did not reveal in speeches throughout the region that many of those targeted by persecution in Poltavskaia had their family members and friends deported or shot including in years before the supposed Omel'chenko crisis even started. Ultimately due to being perceived as the most rebellious area almost all (or 12,000) members of the Poltavskaia stantisa were deported to the north.<ref name="boeckbrian"/> This coincided with and was a part of a wider deportation of 46,000 [[cossacks]] from Kuban.<ref name="cossackspunished">{{cite magazine |title=Russia: Cossacks Punished |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,745027,00.html |access-date=22 October 2023 |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=30 January 1933|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210528070739/http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,745027,00.html |archive-date=28 May 2021}}</ref> According to the Holodomor Museum, 300,000 people were deported from the North Caucasus between 1930 and 1933, two thirds of them from the Kuban region.<ref>{{cite web |title=What was Stanytsia Poltavska punished for? |url=https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/news-museji/what-was-stanytsia-poltavska-punished-for/ |website=Holodomor Museum |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240104074837/https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/news-museji/what-was-stanytsia-poltavska-punished-for/ |archive-date=4 January 2024}}</ref>

Likely in connection to the affairs in Poltavskaia, Ukrainization was officially reversed in a decree on 26 December 1932; as stated in this decree, there was a two-week deadline to transfer all publishing and paperwork in the region to Russian, and the Ukrainian language was effectively banned in Kuban until 1991.<ref name="boeckbrian"/> A representative of the Ukrainian state publishing house claimed 1,500 Ukrainian teachers in the Kuban were either deported or killed though this number has not been verified.<ref name="boeckbrian"/> The professional Ukrainian theatre in Krasnodar was closed. All Ukrainian toponyms in the Kuban, which reflected the areas from which the first Ukrainians settlers had moved, were changed.{{sfn|Ellman|2007}} The names of [[Stanytsia]]s such as the rural town of Kyiv, in Krasnodar, was changed to "Krasnoartilyevskaya", and Uman to "Leningrad", and [[Poltavskaya (rural locality)|Poltavskaia]] to "Krasnoarmieiskaya". Russification, the Holodomor of 1932–1933 and other tactics used by the Union government led to a catastrophic fall in the population that self-identified as being Ukrainian in the Kuban. Official Soviet Union statistics of 1959 state that Ukrainians made up 4% of the population, in 1989 – 3%. The self-identified Ukrainian population of Kuban decreased from 915,000 in 1926, to 150,000 in 1939.{{sfn|Ellman|2007}}

====Kazakhstan====
Ethnic minorities in Kazakhstan were significantly affected by the [[Kazakh famine of 1930–1933]] in addition to the Kazakhs. Ukrainians in Kazakhstan had the second highest proportional death rate after the Kazakhs themselves. Between the 1926 and 1937 censuses, Ukrainian population in Kazakhstan decreased by 36% from 859,396 to 549,859&nbsp;– mainly from famine and epidemics but also including emigration&nbsp;– while Uzbeks, Uighurs, and other ethnic minorities in Kazakhstan each lost between 12% and 30% of their populations.{{sfn|Ohayon|2016}}

=== Aftermath and immediate reception ===
[[File:Famine in Ukraine.jpg|thumb|upright=0.85|A print from a postcard designed by Zofia Nalepińska-Bojczuk, referring to the Holodomor, 1935]]
Despite attempts by the Soviet authorities to hide the scale of the disaster, it became known abroad thanks to the publications of journalists [[Gareth Jones (journalist)|Gareth Jones]], [[Malcolm Muggeridge]], [[Ewald Ammende]], and [[Rhea Clyman]], and photographs made by engineer [[Alexander Wienerberger]] and others. To support their [[Denial of the Holodomor|denial of the famine]], the Soviets hosted prominent Westerners such as [[George Bernard Shaw]], French ex-prime minister [[Édouard Herriot]], and others at [[Potemkin village]]s, who then made statements that they had not seen hunger.{{sfn|Loroff|Vincent|Kuryliw|2015}}{{sfn|Shaw|Wells|Keynes|Stalin|1934}}{{sfn|Thevenin|2005|p=8}}

During the [[Reichskommissariat Ukraine|German occupation of Ukraine]], the occupation authorities allowed the publication of articles in local newspapers about Holodomor and other communist crimes, but they also did not want to pay too much attention to this issue in order to avoid stirring national sentiment.{{citation needed|date=February 2020}} In 1942, [[Stepan Sosnovy]], an [[Agronomy|agronomist]] in [[Kharkiv]], published a comprehensive statistical research on the number of Holodomor casualties, based on documents from Soviet archives.{{sfn|Sosnovy|1953|p=222}}

In the [[post-war]] period, the [[Ukrainian diaspora]] disseminated information about the Holodomor in Europe and North America. At first, the public attitude was rather cautious, as the information came from people who had lived in the occupied territories, but it gradually changed in the 1950s. Scientific study of the Holodomor, based on the growing number of memoirs published by survivors, began in the 1950s.{{citation needed|date=December 2019}}

=== Death toll ===
{{see also|Soviet Census (1937)}}
[[File:Ukraine famine map.png|thumb|350px|A map of the depopulation of Ukraine and southern Russia from 1929 to 1933, with territories that were not part of the Soviet state during the famine in white]]
The Soviet Union long denied that the famine had taken place. The [[NKVD]] (and later [[KGB]]) controlled the archives for the Holodomor period and made relevant records available very slowly. The exact number of the victims remains unknown and is probably impossible to estimate even within a margin of error of a hundred thousand.{{sfn|Soldatenko|2003}} However, by the end of 1933, millions of people had starved to death or otherwise died unnaturally in the Soviet republics. In 2001, based on a range of official demographic data, historian [[Stephen G. Wheatcroft]] noted that official death statistics for this period were systematically repressed and showed that many deaths were un-registered.{{sfn|Uytkroft|2001|p=885}}

Estimates vary in their coverage, with some using the 1933 Ukraine borders, some of the current borders, and some counting ethnic Ukrainians. Some [[Extrapolation|extrapolate]] on the basis of deaths in a given area, while others use archival data. Some historians question the accuracy of Soviet censuses, as they may reflect [[Propaganda in the Soviet Union|Soviet propaganda]].{{sfn|Berezhkov|1993}}{{sfn|Kulchytsky|2002}}

Other estimates come from recorded discussions between world leaders. In an August 1942 conversation, Stalin gave [[Winston Churchill]] his estimates of the number of "[[kulak]]s" who were repressed for resisting [[collectivisation]] as 10 million, in all of the Soviet Union, rather than only in Ukraine. When using this number, Stalin implied that it included not only those who lost their lives but also those who were forcibly deported.{{sfn|Berezhkov|1993|p=317}}{{sfn|Kulchytsky|2002}}

There are variations in opinion as to whether deaths in [[Gulag|Gulag labour camps]] should be counted or only those who starved to death at home. Estimates before archival opening varied widely such as: 2.5&nbsp;million ([[Volodymyr Kubiyovych]]);{{sfn|Kulchytsky|2002}} 4.8&nbsp;million (Vasyl Hryshko);{{sfn|Kulchytsky|2002}} and 5&nbsp;million ([[Robert Conquest]]).{{sfn|Conquest|2002}}

In the 1980s, dissident demographer and historian Alexander P. Babyonyshev (writing as Sergei Maksudov) estimated officially non-accounted [[child mortality]] in 1933 at 150,000,{{sfn|Maksudov|1981}} leading to a calculation that the number of births for 1933 should be increased from 471,000 to 621,000 (down from 1,184,000 in 1927).{{Verify source|date=April 2021}} Given the decreasing birth rates and assuming the natural mortality rates in 1933 to be equal to the average annual mortality rate in 1927–1930 (524,000 per year), a natural population growth for 1933 would have been 97,000 (as opposed to the recorded decrease of 1,379,000). This was five times less than the growth in the previous three years (1927–1930). Straight-line extrapolation of population (continuation of the previous net change) between census takings in 1927 and 1936 would have been +4.043 million, which compares to a recorded −538,000 change. Overall change in birth and death amounts to 4.581 million fewer people but whether through factors of choice, disease or starvation will never be fully known.{{citation needed|date=November 2019}}

In the 2000s, there were debates among historians and in civil society about the number of deaths as Soviet files were released and tension built between Russia and the Ukrainian president [[Viktor Yushchenko]]. Yushchenko and other Ukrainian politicians described fatalities as in the region of seven to ten million.{{sfn|Fawkes|2006}}{{sfn|Sheeter|2007}}{{sfn|Kulchytsky|2003}}{{sfn| Yushchenko|2007}} Yushchenko stated in a speech to the [[United States Congress]] that the Holodomor "took away 20 million lives of Ukrainians,".{{sfn|Yushchenko|2005}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Congressional Record House Articles |website=Congress.gov |date=6 April 2005 |url=https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2005/4/6/house-section/article/H1784-3 |access-date=23 April 2021 |archive-date=23 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210423151238/https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2005/4/6/house-section/article/H1784-3 |url-status=live}}</ref> Former [[Prime Minister of Canada|Canadian Prime Minister]] [[Stephen Harper]] issued a public statement giving the death toll at about 10 million.{{sfn|Kyiv Post|2010}}{{sfn|O'Neil|2010}}{{sfn|Snyder|2009}}

Some Ukrainian and Western historians use similar figures. [[David R. Marples]] gave a figure of 7.5 million in 2007.{{sfn|Marples|2007|p=50}} During an international conference held in Ukraine in 2016, ''Holodomor 1932–1933 loss of the Ukrainian nation'', at the National [[University of Kyiv]] [[Taras Shevchenko]], it was claimed that during the Holodomor 7 million Ukrainians were killed, and in total, 10 million people died of starvation across the USSR.{{sfn|Shevchenko University news|2016}}

However, the use of the 7 to 20 million figures has been criticized by historians [[Timothy D. Snyder]] and [[Stephen G. Wheatcroft]]. Snyder wrote: "President Viktor Yushchenko does his country a grave disservice by claiming ten million deaths, thus exaggerating the number of Ukrainians killed by a factor of three; but it is true that the famine in Ukraine of 1932–1933 was a result of purposeful political decisions, and killed about three million people."{{sfn|Snyder|2009}} In an email to [[Postmedia News]], Wheatcroft wrote: "I find it regrettable that Stephen Harper and other leading Western politicians are continuing to use such exaggerated figures for Ukrainian famine mortality" and "[t]here is absolutely no basis for accepting a figure of 10 million Ukrainians dying as a result of the famine of 1932–1933."{{sfn|Kyiv Post|2010}}{{sfn|O'Neil|2010}}{{sfn|Wheatcroft|2000}} In 2001, Wheatcroft had calculated total population loss (including [[stillbirth]]) across the Union at 10 million and possibly up to 15 million between 1931 and 1934, including 2.8 million (and possibly up to 4.8 million excess deaths) and 3.7 million (up to 6.7 million) population losses including birth losses in Ukraine.{{sfn|Uytkroft|2001|p=885}}

{| class="wikitable floatright" style="margin:1em auto 1em 2em; text-align:right;"
|+ Declassified Soviet statistics<br /> (in thousands){{sfn|Kulchytsky|2002}}
!width=25%|Year || Births || Deaths || Natural<br /> change
|-
|align=center |1927 || 1,184 || 523 || 661
|-
|align=center |1928 || 1,139 || 496 || 643
|-
|align=center |1929 || 1,081 || 539 || 542
|-
|align=center |1930 || 1,023 || 536 || 487
|-
|align=center |1931 ||   975 || 515 || 460
|-
|align=center |1932 ||   782 || 668 || 114
|-
|align=center |'''1933''' || '''471''' || '''1,850''' || '''−1,379'''
|-
|align=center |1934 ||   571 || 483 || 88
|-
|align=center |1935 ||   759 || 342 || 417
|-
|align=center |1936 ||   895 || 361 || 534
|}

In 2002, Ukrainian historian {{Ill|Stanislav Kulchytsky|qid=Q4246777|short=y}}, using demographic data including those recently unclassified, narrowed the losses to about 3.2 million or, allowing for the lack of precise data, 3 million to 3.5 million.{{sfn|Kulchytsky|2002}}{{sfn|Kulchytsky|2004}}{{sfn|Kulchytsky|Yefimenko|2003|pp=42–63}} The number of recorded excess deaths extracted from the birth/death statistics from Soviet archives is contradictory. The data fail to add up to the differences between the results of the 1926 Census and the [[Soviet Census (1937)|1937 Census]].{{sfn|Kulchytsky|2002}} Kulchytsky summarized the declassified Soviet statistics as showing a decrease of 538,000 people in the population of Soviet Ukraine between 1926 census (28,926,000) and 1937 census (28,388,000).{{sfn|Kulchytsky|2002}}

Historians estimate a quarter of the death toll was from children and extrapolate a further 600,000 lost births.{{efn|Lost births are additional births that would hypothetically have taken place had there been no famine.}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Rudnytskyi |first1=Omelian |last2=Levchuk |first2=Nataliia |last3=Wolowyna |first3=Oleh |last4=Shevchuk |first4=Pavlo |last5=Kovbasiuk (Savchuk) |first5=Alla |date=2 April 2015 |title=Demography of a man-made human catastrophe: The case of massive famine in Ukraine 1932-1933 |url=https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/csp/index.php/csp/article/view/21772 |journal=Canadian Studies in Population  |language=en |volume=42 |issue=1–2 |pages=53–80 |doi=10.25336/P6FC7G |issn=1927-629X |doi-access=free |access-date=1 September 2023 |archive-date=1 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230901073458/https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/csp/index.php/csp/article/view/21772 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Similarly, Wheatcroft's work from Soviet archives showed that excess deaths in Ukraine in 1932–1933 numbered a minimum of 1.8 million (2.7 including birth losses): "Depending upon the estimations made concerning unregistered mortality and natality, these figures could be increased to a level of 2.8 million to a maximum of 4.8 million excess deaths and to 3.7 million to a maximum of 6.7 million population losses (including birth losses)".{{sfn|Wheatcroft|2001}}

[[File:Alexander Wienerberger Holodomor18.jpg|thumb|Starvation during the Holodomor, [[Kharkiv Oblast|Kharkivshchyna]], 1933. Photo by [[Alexander Wienerberger]]]]
[[File:HolodomorUcrania9.jpg|thumb|Passers-by and the corpse of a starved man on a street in [[Kharkiv]], 1932]]
A 2002 study by French demographer Jacques Vallin and colleagues{{Sfn|Vallin|Meslé|Adamets|Pyrozhkov|2002}}{{sfn|Meslé|Pison|Vallin|2005|loc="What is striking in the long-term picture of Ukrainian life expectancy is the devastating impact of the calamities of the 1930s and 1940s. In 1933, the famine which had occasioned unparalleled excess mortality of 2.2 million, cut the period life expectancy to a low of under 10 years"}}{{sfn|Meslé |Vallin|2003}} utilising some similar primary sources to Kulchytsky, and performing an analysis with more sophisticated demographic tools with forward projection of expected growth from the 1926 census and backward projection from the 1939 census estimates the number of direct deaths for 1933 as 2.582 million. This number of deaths does not reflect the total demographic loss for Ukraine from these events as the fall of the birth rate during the crisis and the out-migration contribute to the latter as well. The total population shortfall from the expected value between 1926 and 1939 estimated by Vallin amounted to 4.566 million.{{sfn|Vallin|Meslé|Adamets|Pyrozhkov|2002}}{{sfn|Rudnytskyi et al. 2015}}

Of this number, 1.057 million is attributed to the birth deficit, 930,000 to forced out-migration, and 2.582 million to the combination of excess mortality and voluntary out-migration. With the latter assumed to be negligible, this estimate gives the number of deaths as the result of the 1933 famine about 2.2 million. According to demographic studies, [[life expectancy]], which had been in the high forties to low fifties, fell sharply for those born in 1932 to 28 years, and for 1933 fell further to the extremely low 10.8 years for females and 7.3 years for males. It remained abnormally low for 1934 but, as commonly expected for the post-crisis period peaked in 1935–36.{{sfn|Vallin|Meslé|Adamets|Pyrozhkov|2002}}{{sfn|Rudnytskyi et al. 2015}}

According to Snyder in 2010, the recorded figure of excess deaths was 2.4 million. However, Snyder claims that this figure is "substantially low" due to many deaths going unrecorded. Snyder states that demographic calculations carried out by the Ukrainian government provide a figure of 3.89 million dead, and opined that the actual figure is likely between these two figures, approximately 3.3 million deaths to starvation and disease related to the starvation in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933. Snyder also estimates that of the million people who died in the [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic]] from famine at the same time, approximately 200,000 were ethnic Ukrainians due to Ukrainian-inhabited regions being particularly hard hit in Russia.{{sfn|Snyder|2010|pp=42–46}}

Russian historian [[Aleksandr Shubin (historian)|Aleksandr Shubin]] and Kulchytsky believe that figures recorded by Soviet censuses are reliable, and that the figure of unrecorded deaths is not substantial. Shubin writes that for 10 years only around 300 000 deaths could go unrecorded in the whole Soviet Union, and estimates the number of direct deaths as between 1 and 2 millions.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Шубин|first1= А. В.|author-link1=Aleksandr Shubin (historian)|chapter = Украина в XX веке (до 1945 г.)|title = История Украины|language  = ru|publisher  = Алетейя|year = 2018| isbn = 978-5-9906154-0-3}}</ref>

As a child, [[Mikhail Gorbachev]], born into a mixed Russian-Ukrainian family, experienced the famine in [[Stavropol Krai]], Russia. He recalled in a memoir that "In that terrible year [in 1933] nearly half the population of my native village, [[Privolnoye, Krasnogvardeysky District, Stavropol Krai|Privolnoye]], starved to death, including two sisters and one brother of my father."{{sfn|Gorbachev|2006}}

Wheatcroft and [[R. W. Davies]] concluded that disease was the cause of a large number of deaths: in 1932–1933, there were 1.2 million cases of typhus and 500,000 cases of [[typhoid fever]]. Malnourishment increases fatality rates from many diseases, and are not counted by some historians.{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2004|p=429}} From 1932 to 1934, the largest rate of increase was recorded for typhus, commonly spread by [[louse|lice]]. In conditions of harvest failure and increased poverty, lice are likely to increase.{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2004|p=512}}

Gathering numerous refugees at railway stations, on trains and elsewhere facilitates the spread. In 1933, the number of recorded cases was 20 times the 1929 level. The number of cases per head of population recorded in Ukraine in 1933 was already considerably higher than in the USSR as a whole. By June 1933, the incidence in Ukraine had increased to nearly 10 times the January level, and it was much higher than in the rest of the USSR.{{sfn|Davies|Wheatcroft|2004|p=512}}

Estimates of the human losses due to famine must account for the numbers involved in migration (including [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union|forced resettlement]]). According to Soviet statistics, the migration balance for the population in Ukraine for 1927–1936 period was a loss of 1.343 million people. Even when the data were collected, the Soviet statistical institutions acknowledged that the precision was less than for the data of the natural population change. The total number of deaths in Ukraine due to unnatural causes for the given ten years was 3.238 million. Accounting for the lack of precision, estimates of the human toll range from 2.2 million to 3.5 million deaths.{{sfn|Wheatcroft|2018|p=466}}

According to Babyonyshev's 1981 estimate,{{sfn|Maksudov|1981}} about 81.3% of the famine victims in the Ukrainian SSR were ethnic Ukrainians, 4.5% [[Russians]], 1.4% [[Jews]] and 1.1% were [[Polish people|Poles]]. Many [[Belarusians]], [[Volga Germans]] and other nationalities were victims as well. The Ukrainian rural population was the hardest hit by the Holodomor. Since the peasantry constituted a demographic backbone of the Ukrainian nation,{{sfn|Potocki|2003}} the tragedy deeply affected the Ukrainians for many years. In an October 2013 opinion poll (in Ukraine) 38.7% of those polled stated "my families had people affected by the famine", 39.2% stated they did not have such relatives, and 22.1% did not know.{{sfn|Interfax Ukraine|2013}}