Causes of the Holodomor

[18] 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 being Kiev and Kharkov which produced far lower amounts of grain than other sections of the country.

A campaign of political repression, including arrests, deportations, and executions of people proclaimed traitors engaged in sabotaging collectivism, often targeted for belonging to specific demographic groups rather than as individuals, occurred from 1929 to 1932.

According to the letter written by Stalin to Lenin in 1922 his goal was the "replacement of fictitious independence by real internal autonomy of the republics in the sense of language, culture, justice, indoctrination, agriculture".

As a reaction to the literature discussions organised by Khvylovy, Joseph Stalin has written the following in a letter to Kaganovich in 1926 : "Commrade Shumsky fails to see that, given the weakness of the indigenous communist cadres in Ukraine, this movement, led by a number of non-communist intellectuals, can in some places take on the character of a struggle for the alienation of Ukr.

Although famine, allegedly caused by collectivization, raged in many parts of the Soviet Union in 1932, special and particularly lethal policies, according to Yale historian Timothy Snyder in his book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), were adopted in and largely limited to Ukraine at the end of 1932 and 1933.

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.

The initial wording of the decree, "On fought with speculation", adopted 22 August 1932, led to common situations where minor acts such as bartering tobacco for bread were documented as punished by 5 years imprisonment.

When it became clear that the 1932 grain deliveries were not going to meet the expectations of the government, the decreased agricultural output was first blamed on the kulaks, and later on agents and spies of foreign intelligence services, "nationalists", "Petlurovites", and from 1937 on, Trotskyists.

[54] On 8 November, Molotov and Stalin issued an order stating, "from today the dispatch of goods for the villages of all regions of Ukraine shall cease until kolkhozy and individual peasants begin to honestly and conscientiously fulfill their duty to the working class and the Red Army by delivering grain.

[56] In certain collective farms, villages, and raions (districts) the Soviets imposed a blacklist regime (the chorna doshka or "black board") consisting of economic sanctions and a blockade by OGPU units which led to complete extermination by starvation in many of them.

[74] 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.

In the chapter "Banquets and Famine" he describe taking photographs in eastern Ukraine as follows: "We picked out types and subjects for the camera from the better nourished portions, made a swell hundred feet or so of beautifully build miners […].

During the ten days we spent in the mining district it was impossible to sit down to a meal without facing a table groaning with caviar, roast turkey, chicken, cold fish of every description, pastries, even the rarest of all luxuries: tenderloin steak”.

[83] On 23 February 1933, the Politburo of Central Committee adopted a decree requiring foreign journalists to seek travel permits from the General Directorate of Militia before entering the affected areas.

[citation needed] For example, Gareth Jones, one of David Lloyd George's private secretaries, spent several days in mid-March travelling to "all twenty villages, not only in Ukraine, but also in the black earth district, and in the Moscow region, and ...

The Foreign Office of the Soviet Union, without explanation, refused permission to William H. Chamberlain, The Christian Science Monitor correspondent, to visit and observe the harvest in the principal agricultural regions of the North Caucasus and Ukraine.

[citation needed] On 21 October 1933 one of the OUN members, Mykola Lemyk, assassinated Aleksei Mailov, OGPU agent and Secretary of the Soviet Union's consulate in Lviv [Poland at that time].

"[93] By the end of 1933, based on data collected by undercover investigation and photos, the Bohemian-Austrian Cardinal Theodor Innitzer began an awareness-raising campaign in the West about the massive deaths by hunger and occasional cases of cannibalism that were occurring in Ukraine and the North Caucasus at that time.

While the numbers of such reports increased, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine issued a decree on 8 February 1933, that urged every "hunger case" to be treated without delay and with a maximum mobilization of resources by kolkhozes, raions, towns, and oblasts.

[105] After recognition of the famine situation in Ukraine during the drought and poor harvests, the Soviet government in Moscow continued to export grain rather than retain its crop to feed the people,[106] though at a lower rate than in previous years.

According to Oleh Wolowyna 390 "anti-Soviet, counter-revolutionary insurgent and chauvinist" groups were eliminated resulting in 37,797 arrests, that lead to 719 executions, 8,003 people being sent to Gulag camps, and 2,728 being put into internal exile.

[131] The recent award-winning documentary Genocide Revealed (2011),[132] by Canadian-Ukrainian director Yurij Luhovy, presents evidence for the view that Stalin and his cohorts in the Communist regime (not necessarily the Russian people as a whole) deliberately targeted Ukrainians in the mass starvation of 1932–1933.

An example of conviction for possession of memoirs on the Holodomor: "being hostile to the Soviet authorities in the period 1930-1933, [...] wrote a diary of counter-revolutionary content, in which she condemned the actions of the Communist Party in organising collective farms in the USSR and described the difficult material conditions of workers".

During winter and spring 1930–1931, the Ukrainian agricultural authority Narkomzem issued several reports about the significant decline of livestock caused by poor treatment, the absence of forage, stables, and farms, and "kulak sabotage".

By 1932, the sowing campaign of the Ukrainian SSR was implemented with minimal draft power, as most of the remaining horses were incapable of working, while the number of available agricultural tractors was too small to fill the gap.

[citation needed] Speculative prices of food in the cooperative network (5–10 times more compared to neighbouring Soviet republics) brought significant peasant "travel for bread", while attempts to handle the situation had very limited success.

"[155] During winter and spring 1930–1931, the Ukrainian agricultural authority Narkomzem issued several reports about the significant decline of livestock and especially draft power caused by poor treatment, absence of forage, stables, and farms, and "kulak sabotage".

The initial wording of the decree, "On fought with speculation", adopted 22 August 1932 led to common situations where minor acts such as bartering tobacco for bread were documented as punished by 5 years imprisonment.

When it became clear that the 1932 grain deliveries were not going to meet the expectations of the government, the decreased agricultural output was blamed on the kulaks, and later to agents and spies of foreign Intelligence Services—"nationalists", "Petlurovites", and from 1937 on, Trotskyists.

[54] On 8 November, Molotov and Stalin issued an order stating "from today the dispatch of goods for the villages of all regions of Ukraine shall cease until kolkhozy and individual peasants begin to honestly and conscientiously fulfill their duty to the working class and the Red Army by delivering grain.