Editing Holodomor (section)

====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" />