Holomodor: Famine in Soviet Ukraine

Soviet idealisms spread like wildfire throughout Russia and its European satellites. In December 1917, Ukraine became completely controlled by Bolshevik leaders, who formed the Soviet government for Ukraine. By 1919 the country had adopted its first constitution, which was inspired by the political agenda of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.

Soviet Ukraine helped establish and found the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with communists leaders Vladimir Lenin the Premier of the USSR and Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. When Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, Stalin was left as the primary leader of the USSR. Under Stalin's leadership the USSR regime began the forced collectivization of agriculture and farming.

Collectivization was intended to exponentially increase agricultural output by utilizing large-scale mechanized farm, which would force the large population of peasants in the Soviet Union back into a system of serfdom. Stalin and comrades devised a Five Year Plan that called for the rapid growth of economy with anticipations that industrial production would rise by 200% and agricultural production would rise by 50%. Collective farming was a major part of this program.

The high expectations were being met with Stalin's article Dizzy with Success, boasted about the incredible success of the new program. This success was shortly lived. The USSR quickly began to feel the negative effects of its new farming methods with oncoming droughts and famines.

Though famine terrorized much of the USSR, Holomodor, which means Great Famine in Ukranian, refers to the famine occurring 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine where the cruel policies and lack of aid from the totalitarian government lead by Stalin, is said to have caused an estimated 6 to 8 million people.

Soviet Ukraine sat in the middle of the "breadbasket of Europe", a prime area to grow wheat. 80% of people were traditional village farmers, before Stalin imposed collectivization. Among these farmers, were kulaks, which were wealthy farmers that owned 20 acres or more and employed local peasants to farm their land. Kulaks were the most opposed to working on the mass farms, so Stalin soon pronounced them "enemies of the people".

Kulaks were community leaders, thus Stalin pinpointed them and their roles in the Ukranian village, which was a key element of the national culture he despised. During his reign in the USSR from 1922-1985, Stalin created a cult of personality, which centered on his own "heroic deeds" for the regime. Stalin heavily opposed cultural identity, persecuting the Russian Orthodox Church for its promotion of beliefs against the communist accepted atheism.

Commonly known as the man-made famine, Holomodor has been recently recognized as genocide committed by Soviet Russia against Ukranians by President Viktor Yushchenko, who released KGB records that clearly stated the deliberate targeting of the Ukraine. The huge declassification of documents shows that Soviet Russia planned the famine in order to ethnically cleanse Ukraine and other USSR nations.

Ukrainian grain harvests of 1932 where less than average, mostly due to the obstacles faced during the collectivization campaign, but there was enough grain to substantially supply the population. However, Soviet leaders deliberately set quotas for grain impossibly high, leaving Ukrainians unable to reap the benefits of the crops they grew.

By August 1933, there was absolutely no food in the Ukraine for civilians. While Communist Party officials were well fed, commoners were dropping dead in the streets. Dozens of bodies were carted off to be incinerated daily, and some were so desperate they ate leaves off trees, killed dogs, cats, frogs, mice and birds and ate them for meat. Some even became deranged in the midst of their starvation, resorting to cannibalism.

The lack of food became physically and emotionally wearing on Ukrainians, who were sometimes teased by the sights of "surplus" wheat and potatoes surrounded by barbed wire and armed guardsmen. While other soviet states flourished or even received aid from Russia, Soviet authorities denied the existence of widespread famine in Ukraine.

The famine began to subside as the 1933 harvest became available, but one of Stalin's top lieutenants in Ukraine called the year of raging famine as great success, having destroyed Ukrainian culture, broken the spirit of the peasants and showed them who was their "master".