The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine is a 1986 book by British historian Robert Conquest published by the Oxford University Press.

[7] The Ukrainian National Association, a New Jersey–based ethnic fraternal group with a hard-right tradition (its newspaper Svoboda was banned by Canada during World War II for its pro-German sympathies), sponsored the work with a $80,000 subsidy.

'"[9] The United States Congress promoted awareness of the Holodomor and set U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, which was authorized in 1985 and headed by James Mace.

[10] The commission conducted archival and oral history research under a $382,000 congressional appropriation,[8] leading to a final report conclusion in 1988 that "Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932–1933."

[8][10] For Mace's wife Nataliya Dzyubenko-Mace, the commission was instrumental in alerting the U.S. public and politicians to these horrific crimes, helping rouse U.S.society from political lethargy.

"[4]: 507  Historian Ronald Grigor Suny commented that Conquest's estimation for famine deaths was almost quadruple that of many fellow Soviet specialists.

Conquest's account of the events is that of "a war declared by an arrogant, revolutionary regime on the peasantry and on certain national communities within the country (mainly Ukrainians and Kazakhs), resulting in total victory for the central power at an exorbitant cost.

"[2]: 149 Conquest's thesis that the famine constituted genocide and was deliberately inflicted is controversial[7]: p. 9  and remains part of the ongoing debates on the Holodomor genocide question,[4]: 507  with Vladimir N. Brovkin describing it in a 1987 review for the Harvard Ukrainian Studies as a challenge to the "revisionist school" of historians[12]: 234  and Alexander Nove stating "the Ukrainian countryside suffered terribly.

"[4]: 507 Largely accepting his thesis was Geoffrey A. Hosking,[7]: 7  who wrote that "Conquest's research establishes beyond doubt, however, that the famine was deliberately inflicted there [in Ukraine] for ethnic reasons—it was done in order to undermine the Ukrainian nation."

Peter Wiles of the London School of Economics stated that "Conquest had 'adopted the Ukraine exile view [on the origins of the famine of 1932–33], and he has persuaded this reviewer.

Sergei Maksudov, a Soviet émigré scholar much cited by Conquest, concluded that the famine caused 3.5 million premature deaths in Ukraine—700,000 from starvation and the rest from diseases due to malnutrition.

According to Moshe Lewin of the University of Pennsylvania, whose Russian Peasants and the Soviet Power was groundbreaking in social history, was quoted as saying: "This is crap, rubbish.

"[8] In response to criticism from R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft following the opening of Soviet archives Conquest responded in a 2003 letter that he did not believe "Stalin purposely inflicted the 1933 famine.